Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s only one grocery store open at two in the morning and Goten knows it well.  He knows no one will judge him for coming in sweaty and smelling like a combination of nearly every dish on the menu.  The lights are bright and the music is loud and it would be disorienting if he didn’t know exactly what he wanted. A box of fried chicken and a bottle of soda.  He doesn’t want to think about food or preparing it for himself but he has to eat and he knows the fridge won’t have what he’s craving. He can eat one meal free at the restaurant, but he doesn’t want any of that.  A downside of making it all the time, he supposes.

There aren’t many people in the grocery store at this hour.  The workers, of course, who had to know what they were getting into when they got hired at a twenty-four hour grocery store look dead in the eyes but he’s one to talk.  He’s on his eighth day without any off in between, but that’s what he expected. It’s what he wanted, once, but now that he’s in it, working these intense hours, he isn’t so sure.  A pregnant woman is in the produce section, checking the weights of bananas. A couple of people in pajamas who might be insomniacs are pacing the snack aisle, probably hoping that they’ll wear themselves out enough to go to sleep.  A hopefully off-duty cop.

Goten puts everything he needs in a basket and queues up behind a guy around his age who’s buying two cartons of bone broth and nothing else.  He figures he must be one of the insomniacs. No pajamas but he’s wearing a bulky denim jacket and legwarmers pulled over his sweatpants.

The guy turns and Goten can hear him sniff the air.

“I don’t smell that bad, do I?” he asks. “I just got off work.”

The guy shakes his head.

“No--I mean, yeah, you do smell, but it’s the chicken.”

Goten figures he should be offended but he’s too tired.  Plus, honestly, the guy is pretty cute. Olive skin, full, pouting lips, sharply blue eyes.

“I can get you one,” he says. “They’ve got a few under the heat lamp.”

He shakes his head and gestures to the bone broth. “All I need.”

“Is it that good?”

“It tastes like fucking nothing.”

Goten feels himself pull a face.  Food should never taste like nothing.  It’s a mockery to his profession.

“Then why do you drink it?”

The guy laughs, a raspy sound like metal being dragged on stone. “Good question.”

He reaches into the duffle bag hanging from his shoulder to pull out his wallet to pay for the broth.  Goten finds himself zoning out, watching him. The fall of dyed (?) purple hair that moves like silk over his ears, the longest strands of it touching the top of his cheekbones.  Goten feels something in his stomach that he attributes to the late-early hour and lack of sleep. Lack of action, too. Nothing about his current living situation allows for him to bring anyone home.

The guy finishes paying and takes one of those reusable tote bags out from the duffle bag for his broth.  The bag says, West City Dance Company.

“See ya,” he says and tosses a wink at him before walking towards the door.

The guy walks as if he’s dancing and that and the bag together make him think that he’s some kind of dancer.

Goten pays for his own items and takes a plastic bag like a heathen.  He shifts its contents as he leaves, vowing to dispose of it before his uncle finds it.  He eats the majority of the chicken on the bus and drains the entire bottle of soda. By the time he reaches the house, he’s relieved of all of his items except for the remainder of the chicken.

He lets himself in, making sure to keep quiet.  He puts the chicken in the fridge and grabs a pad of sticky notes.  He writes that the chicken is up for grabs and situates the greasy, cardboard container between the bottles of kale juice and carton of alfalfa sprouts in the fridge.

He stays quiet as he walks up the first flight of stairs.  He carefully opens the hatch to the attic and eases the ladder down.  He climbs up it, knowing to skip the rung that squeaks and pulls it up behind him before replacing the hatch.

The attic is finished to be somewhat of an extra bedroom.  Goten kicks off his crocs and strips off his coat and striped chef pants.  He shoves them in the hamper to avoid the smell and contemplates a shower for a moment before realizing that the sound of the spray would wake everyone up.  Instead he just pulls a sweatshirt on and crawls into bed, leaving on his socks and boxers. He’s asleep nearly when his head hits the pillow but in the gray area before he falls into the void of sleep, he pictures the guy from the grocery store and wonders why he was out at two in the morning.

--

It’s nearly three by the time he gets home and Trunks curses under his breath.  He puts the cartons of broth in the cupboard and tears his clothes off. He turns the shower on as hot as it will go.  He opens the window in the bathroom and lights a cigarette. While he waits for the water to heat up, he sits naked on the toilet and smokes it.  When he’s finished, he climbs in and washes off the day. The grease from his hair and the sweat that still clings to his body. He lets the hot spray hit his sore muscles, wishing not for the first time that the water pressure in his apartment was better.  Wishes a lot of things in his apartment were better.

Trunks climbs out once he’s done and dries off.  Pulls on underwear and sweatpants and falls into bed.  He lies there, waiting for sleep to come and hates that, no matter how tired he is, his mind won’t shut off and allow him to fall asleep easily.  He has to be up in three hours and here he is, lying in bed, mind racing.

His father’s birthday in a couple of weeks and then his shortly after.  Rehearsals tomorrow and if they’ll be ready to perform Romeo and Juliet.  He’s only company, not a soloist, but he doesn’t want to make an ass of himself.  Rehearsals for The Nutcracker thereafter.  Christmas. Snow.  Home. His grandmother’s theatre group putting on The Tempest.  His sister’s science fair project she told him about when he was home last.  The stink of the gym oddly similar to the smell of the rehearsal room. Feet and sweat.  Smell--the chef behind him in line at the grocery store and the delicious fried chicken that made his stomach roil and rumble.  Something familiar about him, like a faraway memory.

Trunks squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them.  Lies in the dark and surrenders to his psyche, knowing he’ll be lying here until his alarm goes off at five thirty.  When it does, he rises and brushes his teeth, washes his face. He pulls a clean unitard out of his drawer and pulls a pair of sweatpants on over it along with a bulky sweatshirt.  He grabs his jacket and sorts out what’s in his duffle bag, making sure his keys and wallet are present. He laces up his old Doc Martens and dashes out of the house. He’s given himself enough time to get a cup of coffee from the cart near the bus stop.  The bus makes it to the stop at six and he’s lucky enough to find a seat.

Trunks blows the steam from the cup of his coffee before placing the lid back on.  He wishes it were espresso or something more powerful, but it’s cheap and it’s caffeine.  It burns as it hits his empty stomach and he winces. He has the time so he digs around in his bag until he finds a mostly squashed NutriGrain bar.  He devours it and shoves the wrapper back down in the bag.

He reaches the theatre by seven thirty and walks into the rehearsal studio to begin stretching.

Everything starts at eight thirty so Trunks takes it slow.  Stretches languidly and conscious of his body and what it can do. Standing at the barre was always far more natural to him than being in the ring ever was.  Glad his family understood--eventually.

He feels warm and loose and ready when it all starts.  And then rehearsal. They go through choreography and Trunks melts in with the company, helping people with their leaps and aiding them.  He’s good at this. He isn’t a soloist, as much as he wanted to be. He won’t let himself fall for it and always wonder if it he got it because he deserved it or because--

A hand gently touches his side.

“I still think you’d make an amazing Romeo.” Mira’s voice is a low murmur near his ear.

Trunks turns his head away.

“I would,” he agrees, “but I couldn’t accept it.”

“If you didn’t let your pride get in the way--”

“It’s not pride,” he says sharply. “If I get a solo part, I want it to be because of my own skill, not because--”

“Shh.”

Mira’s hands go to steady him, an outwardly innocuous act.  Trunks knows he shouldn’t still let him touch him. Shouldn’t have slept with him in the first place, but he was lonely and Mira was warm.  And married. He called it off because his place in the theatre could easily go to someone else. He’s replaceable. If Mira’s wife, the theatre owner, found out, he would be gone.  He’s tried too hard to let his dick lead him to dumb decisions.

“It would be,” Mira says.

“But I wouldn’t know.  So here we are.”

He turns away from him and moves on.  Even as he does, though, he feels Mira’s eyes on him.

--

It’s still breakfast time when Goten comes downstairs.  The way his schedule is, he can never keep track of the days but he sees backpacks near the kitchen table and deduces that it must be a school day.

He sinks into a chair and thinks about his chicken from the morning before.  Greasy and cold and--his stomach turns. Maybe not. Goten gets back up to sort out cereal.  Once he fixes himself a bowl, he sits across from his cousins.

Part of him feels like an outsider because it isn’t his family.  It’s his uncle’s family and he’s his delinquent nephew living with him because his mother has gone off to live at his grandpa’s house and God only knows where his father is.  He can’t afford an apartment on a line cook’s salary so he lives in his uncle’s attic and tries not to wake them when he comes home at two in the morning.

“Can I take the chicken for lunch?” Sapphire asks.

She and Azurite are eating in unison and probably don’t even notice that they are.  She stares at him with a look that’s eerily reminiscent of his Uncle Lapis. The twins do that a lot even though they’re adopted.  Nurture versus nature, he reckons.

“No.”

“C’mon.  Dad packs us crap.”

Uncle Lapis turns from pouring coffee into his thermos and frowns.

“It’s healthy.”

“Papa and Goten can eat it.”

Azurite, the more subdued of the twins, nods his head.  Goten skirts a glance to his Uncle Raditz to see what he has to say.

“Your dad packs you healthy food and he doesn’t force anyone to be a vegetarian,” he says diplomatically.

Goten knows his uncle has always said that, when they got married, Lapis said that he didn’t have to convert to be a vegetarian and he was free to clog his arteries how he pleased.  As with most things involving his uncle, he figures it was mostly meant as a joke.

“Also Goten paid for it.  When you pay for your own food, you can keep it,” he finishes.

The twins make identical sulking faces.  Goten spoons cereal into his mouth, thinking about his shift that night and how there are still two more days until he has a day off because of scheduling fucking up.  Knows he can’t call in. Can’t become an executive chef if he doesn’t grind and grind and grind.

Uncle Lapis turns around with his own lunchbox and points at the twins.

“Grab your stuff and I’ll drop you off at school on my way to work.”

They leave their bowls and spoons and dutifully scoop up their backpacks.  Sapphire is scowling, but then Goten would be, too, if he was on his way to sixth grade.  Uncle Raditz rises from the table and kisses him.

“Will you be late?”

“Maybe.  Don’t make that face.”

His uncle is pouting like a teenager.  Goten looks away only partly because he doesn’t want to watch his uncles be ridiculously sappy.  Domestic bliss makes him think of his own family and the anger he can’t let surface.

“I’ll see,” Uncle Lapis amends.  Hesitates and then kisses him back and then checks the clock on the stove. “Azure, Sapph, get in the car.  It’s time to go.”

They’re gone and it’s just him and his uncle.  Goten drains the cereal in the bottom of his bowl and takes his and the twins’ to the sink.

“Are you working tonight?”

He nods.

“What are you doin’ ‘til then?”

Good question.  When he’s not working, he’s usually recovering from working and resting up for the next shift.  He wonders if his uncle is going to ask him to call his mother. He can’t bring himself to. He said some pretty awful things to her when she walked out last year, things he can’t take back.  That’s not his style, though. The guilt comes from his brother or from his grandma Gine.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly.

“I’m going over to your grandpa’s to help him fix up this car Uncle Toma got.  I was gonna force Bardy to help, but--”

“I suck at cars,” he says too sharply.

Unlike his brother who can do anything.  Unlike his uncle where it’s his job, or his cousin who helps out and knew how to change oil before he lost his first tooth.

Uncle Raditz shrugs. “Fair enough.  Maybe get more sleep, though. You’re all pissy.”

Goten lowers his shoulders and shrugs.  It’s easy with his uncle, which is why he’s living here and not with his brother or grandparents.

“Maybe,” he allows.

--

“C’mon, kid.  Show me the shit you do.”

Trunks laughs at the ease of it and puts himself into first position.  The hulking, older man in front of him attempts to do the same. A boxing ring isn’t the place to do this but even though he gave up boxing years and years ago, this still feels like home.  Staying here all day and eating his lunch in the ring.

Nappa shudders and then nearly falls over.

“Jesus Christ,” he says, accent still heavy after all these years. “That posture shit’s hard.”

“It requires training,” Trunks says with a smirk. “Like all of this.”

He gestures around the gym that his father runs.  He’s quit boxing for years now but he teaches, which is the funniest thing in the world to Trunks.  His father has less than zero patience and is training beginners and casual people who want to box for fitness.

Coming to his family home or to the gym is safe, because they can never go to his place.  They can’t see the crumbling foundation or the surrounding buildings. They can’t know how poor he is because he knows his mother will insist he stay at home.  He’ll worry her and he’s sick of doing that.

Being here is better than being at home and he has time after rehearsals before taking the long ride to his apartment so he comes here where his grandfather and Nappa are doing a lot of talking and very little working out.  But they’re old, he thinks, and this is where they go instead of a bar.

Trunks looks at the posters on the walls, finds the one of his father advertising a fight.  The Prince of Bensonhurst, he was called. In the poster, he’s probably Trunks’s age. The poster is black and white and, without the aid of their different coloring, he can see how they look exactly alike.

“When is your show?” Nappa asks, dragging him out of his reverie.

“Starts next week.”

Trunks leaves the ring and settles down on the mat.  Stretches his legs out far ahead of him and leans forward to open the muscles in his lower back.  Feels his grandfather looking at him.

“Did that idiot choreographer give you a solo?” he asks.

“No,” he says.

His grandfather swears in Italian and makes a rude hand gesture. “Waste of your talent.”

He appreciates the support.

--

Goten doesn’t know what to do with a day off.  He suspects the restaurant will call him in and he’ll show up because his mother taught him to be dependable, but for now he’s free.  He sleeps late and takes his time in the shower and puts on real clothes. The house is quiet. It’s a weekend but his uncles have taken his cousins to lunch.  Goten would have been invited but he forgot to mention that it was his day off. He walks around a house that isn’t his but for now he can pretend he has more than just an attic bedroom.

No, that’s not fair.

He isn’t made to feel like a guest.  He cooks some when he isn’t tired of it from work.  He cleans and does laundry that isn’t just his. He watches television with them because he’s family.

His phone buzzes with a call and he knows it’s his brother before he even checks the screen.

“Are you working?” Gohan asks because they don’t have to do pleasantries.

Goten gets up to walk around the living room.

“No, I’m off today.”

He waits for the inevitable.  Once upon a time, his brother and him got along fantastically.  He was Goten’s idol, on a pedestal so high the only one higher was the one he had had his father on.  Now every conversation turns into an argument. Gohan hated how he handled their mother leaving, but he wasn’t the one alone with dad those three weeks before he disappeared, too.

“You should call mom,” he says. “She misses you.”

“I’m twenty-four,” he says, “you don’t have to tell me what to do.”

“It’s a suggestion.”

He hates the way he says it.  Like he’s a child. Goten beings to pace around the couch.  He stops at an end table and lets his fingers linger on it. Concentrates on the framed photo from his uncles’ wedding, the one they had that was symbolic because it wasn’t yet legal.

He can’t call his mother because he’s ashamed and embarrassed and still distantly mad at her for it.  How she left and his father left and no one cared that Goten was alone except for Uncle Raditz.

“How’s the restaurant?” Gohan tries again.

He rests his hand flat on the table.  Exhales.

“Fine.  Busy.”

He wants to tell him to cut the crap and just hang up if he doesn’t want to say what he means.

“It’s bullshit,” he says after a while, staring at a framed baby picture of Bardock.

His brother doesn’t answer at first and Goten wonders if he was on speaker and just swore in front of his niece and nephew.

“What is?” he asks finally.

“All of this.”

He turns away from the end table and continues pacing.  Family photos everywhere. His is in some of them, when everyone gets together, but it’s not as bad as at his grandparents’ house.  There are less reminders.

“Mom is in fucking Fire Mountain and no one even knows where dad is and we’re just supposed to pretend it’s fine.”

Another pause on the phone and anger flares brighter, headier.  Goten clenches his jaw.

“You know where he is, don’t you?”

“Goten--”

He’s never had a short temper.  It used to be he was laidback and easily swayed.  But this, it roils him. The helplessness of it. Gohan wasn’t there those three weeks.  Goten was. He was the one left behind. Him.

“Of course you wouldn’t tell me,” he snaps. “You always thought you meant more to him than I did!”

“Goten--”

He wants to hang up.  This is the fastest they’ve begun to argue.

“I don’t know where dad is,” Gohan says with measured calm. “And that you think that I would keep that information from you and mom makes me feel sick.”

He feels bad for yelling and, despite the calm, his brother sounds on the verge of tears.  He feels a bit sick himself.

“Sorry,” he says.

A long pause.  Too long.

“Come for dinner on your next day off,” Gohan says. “Pan and Puck miss you.”

What about you, Gohan?  Do you miss me?

He doesn’t ask because he’s afraid of the answer.  Why would he miss the little brother who flies off the handle at him and accuses him of withholding his father’s location?  He mutters a goodbye and a half-hearted promise and hangs up.

He has to get out of the house, he realizes.  Grabs his jacket and leaves. Locks up behind himself.

--

He has no destination, no desires, and by the time he comes back to himself, it’s the late evening, verging into night and he’s downtown and unsure how he lost the entire day.  He sits on a bench and stares at his phone. A message from his uncle asking if he’ll make it to dinner. No other notifications.

The sound of talking fills the air and he realizes that he’s not alone.  Of course he’s not. He’s downtown where the nightlife is about to begin.  He’s a small part of a larger place and, somehow, that grounds him. This talking and movement comes from the building in front of him.  They’re all in leotards and legwarmers and tugging on jackets and coats. Dancers, he figures, and this must be a theatre.

He sees a flash of purple and, among them, he sees the guy from the other day.  The hot guy from the grocery store. He won’t remember him, so he says nothing.

But then he’s standing in front of him, visibly tired, but staring at him with those intense blue eyes with a furrowed brow as if he’s figuring something out.  There are dark circles under his eyes but they don’t diminish the shine of them. The blue.

“Fried chicken,” he says after a moment.  Smirking, he adds, “You smell better today.”

Goten should be mad but he’s not.  It’s contact with someone who’s not in his family.  Someone he doesn’t work with. He stands up from the bench.

“It’s Goten,” he says, “not fried chicken.”

He grins goofily and points to himself.

“And I’m Trunks.”

Trunks.  Something about it is familiar, but he can’t place it.  The other dancers have disappeared into subway tunnels or on buses and the area is quieter again.

“Were you waiting for someone?” he asks.

Trunks cocks his head to the side as if it’s a bit of a challenge.  Like, were you?

If he were feeling more charming, Goten would have said “You,” and winked, but he doesn’t so he shakes his head.

“No.  I just wound up here.  I was taking a walk.”

It’s easy and not entirely untrue.  Trunks shifts his duffle bag on his shoulder and glances at the bus stop and then back at him.

“So you aren’t a fan of ballet?”

“Can’t say that I am.”

He thinks he might be as he watches Trunks stand in front of him, legwarmers pulled up over his joggers and his bulky, boxy denim jacket.  The layers combined with his hair make him look like a nineties heartthrob ready to drag him kicking and screaming to say that reality bites.  It’s cute.

“Shame.”

There’s a large, lit poster near the theatre casting its light on them both.  It advertises a production of Romeo and Juliet and Goten didn’t even know that was a ballet.

“Are you in that?” He points.

Trunks turns and then nods. “Yeah, but just in company.  The corps de ballet.”

“Which means?”

It’s nice to talk about something banal with someone not related to him.  Something that isn’t about firing appetizers or yelling about someone’s messy presentation.

“It means I get to be a party guest and don’t get any solos.”

“What role would you want?” He pauses. “Is it called roles in ballets?”

“Parts,” Trunks clarifies. “I was offered Romeo, but.  I had to turn it down.”

They somehow have started walking down the chilly sidewalk, away from the bus stop.

“Why?  That’s the lead, isn’t it?”

“Creative differences,” he says flatly. “but if I had a choice, probably Mercutio.  He’s always struck me as a bit of a gay icon so I relate.”

He flashes a smile but there’s a bit of wariness to it.  Goten wants to say something that isn’t just blurting out that he likes guys, too.

“I get that,” he says too loudly, which is probably worse, but Trunks laughs.

“That your way of coming out, too?”

Goten shrugs.

“I feel like there’s no way of easily sliding it into conversation.”

Trunks arches his brows.

“Really?  Because I was dead-on with my Mercutio comment.  Super smooth.”

He laughs for the first time in what feels like a while.

“If you say so.”

They stop at a red light, not having a destination.  Goten knows he should text Uncle Raditz back but he doesn’t.  Trunks takes a cigarette out and asks if he minds him smoking.  He doesn’t because he’s used to the other chefs at work smoking.  Sometimes he stands out back with them while they do, smelling the smoke mixing and figuring he’s destroying his own lungs all the same.

“Go ahead.”

Trunks lights it, cupping his hand around the flame as he does.  Goten watches him, illuminated, and feels that familiarity again.

“This’ll sound like a line but I feel like I know you from somewhere,” Trunks says.

The light changes and they walk together.  Goten doesn’t know how or why they’ve wound up together but he doesn’t mind the company.  Even enjoys it.

“No, I get it.  Your name. It’s weird, but I feel like I’ve heard it before.”

“Maybe.  Have you eaten?”

He shakes his head.  Thinks back to their encounter in the grocery store.

“Do you eat?”

Trunks makes a scoffing sound. “I eat.  I just try to avoid carbs and stuff. Forbidden for dancers.”

Goten can’t relate.  Carbs are pillars of his diet.

“There’s a restaurant here that’s one of those bougie places.  High prices, little portions,” he says. “But I can get us food for free.”

He isn’t sure why he says it but Trunks immediately perks up at the mention of free food.

“How?”

“I used to work there before I got hired as a sous chef at Duality.”

Trunks stops and stares at him, blinks those beautiful blue eyes.

“Launch Gemini’s new place,” he clarifies.

Still nothing, it seems.

“The celebrity chef?”

Trunks shakes his head.

“Know how you asked if it was roles or parts in ballet?  That’s me and the culinary world. I don’t know shit, my dude.”

He has to laugh.  They walk until they’re out of the theatre district and Goten begins to recognize the streets.  The streetlights are on and people mill about, deciding where to eat. Goten feels that he has a place in the world now.  That he isn’t floating, disconnected from it. The person next to him helps.

“Does this place have a dress code?” Trunks asks. “I’m also, like, gross and sweaty.”

He must have sprayed something on, then, because he doesn’t smell bad.  He smells like something spicy and citrus-like.

“Nah.  They’re one of those wannabe casual places but really aren’t.”

Goten gestures down the avenue for them to turn.  He figures it’ll be fine because it’s not like he quit under bad circumstances.  His current job was a step up. Restaurants are a changing business.

The hostess remembers him and gets him to a small two top in the corner.  Trunks shoves his duffle bag under the table. He picks up the menu and widens his eyes.  Swears in a language Goten doesn’t recognize.

“You weren’t kidding,” he says.

The server arrives with a glass bottle of water and recognizes him, too.  Gives a wink at the check and Goten smiles, nearly guilty. He never took advantage of coming here and getting free food and the staff still likes him.

“I’m good with water.”

Trunks rolls his lips in. “How much...is a soda?”

“Two-fifty.”

He visibly exhales and says, “I’ll have a Diet Coke.”

The server nods and leaves.  Goten takes the bottle and pours water into both of their glasses.

“This is some first date,” Trunks says with a smirk.

He scoffs. “This isn’t a date.  You just stopped me from dissociating so I figure I owe you.”

“Gay and you have brain shit?  A man after my own heart.”

Goten laughs because it feels good.  This feels normal. Talking to a strange dancer who feels new and familiar at once.  Away from his family. Away from himself.

The server returns with Trunks’s soda and he sips it as he eyes the menu.

“I’ll get tenderloin,” Goten says. “Who’s the manager tonight?”

“Dende’s already waived your bill,” the server says.

“I wasn’t asking because of that.”

“I know.  But he misses you.”

Goten nods, feels self-conscious and wishes that he picked a restaurant where he hasn’t worked.  Some cheap dive. Why here? Does he want to impress him?

“I’ll have the pumpkin ravioli,” Trunks says.

They hand their menus over and Goten watches him take another sip of his soda.

“It said ‘with amaretti’ and I’m wondering how that works with pasta.”

“Pretty well, actually.  The sweetness is good.” Goten pauses to sip his water. “I used to make the raviolis for that.”

Trunks raises his eyebrows again. “I wonder if it’ll be as good as my nonna’s pasta.”

“You’re Italian?”

“Half,” he says.

“Which side?”

“The pigheaded one.”

Goten gives a laugh. “I thought you said you were only half.”

He sticks his tongue out.

“You just met me.  You don’t know just how pigheaded I am yet.”

He can tell, though.  Can tell in the stubborn jut of his chin and the furrow in his brow.  How he just wormed his way into Goten’s life and he feels like he’s always been there.  It’s weird.

Their food comes and Trunks looks happy as he eats it.

“My mom’s family is pretty loaded,” he says, “but she ran off from that to try and make it on her own so we only get shit like this whenever we visit them, which is only on high holidays.”

He doesn’t ask why Goten hasn’t brought up anything about his family or any anecdotes and he’s glad.  Midway through their meals, Trunks sits up straight, posture perfect and in line.

“I got it,” he says. “Camp Kame.”

Goten startles at the name and then the memory.  He spent a couple summers in his youth going to that camp until his parents simply couldn’t afford it.  He had gone once when he was six and another time when he was seven and on that time there had been a boy who had been his friend.  One who had gotten him into all kinds of trouble. Someone he hadn’t thought about since then because life is like that, especially when you’re a kid.

“That’s right,” he says. “Trunks.  That’s why your name was familiar.”

Trunks exhales and slumps in his seat.

“Thank God, that was gonna bug me.  But, hey, what are the odds?”

Indeed.

The check is waived but they split the tip and then it’s back on the street where it’s fully night now and Goten realizes he still hasn’t texted his uncle back.  He sends an emoji as a band-aid and turns to Trunks.

“Thanks.”

“I should be thanking you.  You got me thirty dollar ravioli for free.” He grins and he looks beautiful that way. “Hey.”

“What?”

“I have a few more friends and family tickets for my performance.  It’s about the same price. Lemme repay you.”

He doesn’t really want to go see the ballet but part of him wants to see Trunks dance.

“Give me your number and name and junk and I can send you the tickets electronically.”

Trunks takes Goten’s phone out of his hand and types in his number.  Hands it back. Goten texts him his name and leaves out the number.

“Wait.  I need a contact photo.”

He takes the phone back and raises it to take a selfie.  Goten laughs.

“I’ll text you the QR code dealie.  First show’s next Thursday,” he says.

“I’m off,” he says, surprised that it is. “Okay.”

Trunks smiles and he smiles back.

“Okay.”

His phone vibrates in his hand and he looks at it.

(Uncle Raditz): if you think an emoji makes up for hours without contact i swear to fucking god tennie

He winces a bit.

“I ought to go home.  I’ll see you at your show, I guess.”

“I know,” he says and winks.

He says it so assuredly that it makes Goten smile and, for some reason, his stomach flips.

Chapter Text

Goten thinks he needs to get a suit.  Ballets are fancy, right? His own wardrobe is pathetic.  There’s his clothes for work which are all stained in various ways.  When he was younger, his mother taught him all the different kinds of methods for getting out stains.  When to use bleach and when to use fizzy water. He can lift almost anything out of anything but some stains are in too deep, he figures.  His regular clothes are a haphazard array of sweaters and t-shirts and jeans. Sweatpants and sneakers.

“Do you have a tux I can borrow?”

Uncle Raditz seems surprised. “Do I look like someone who has a tux lying around?”

He sighs, expecting that response.

“I’m going to the ballet on Thursday and I need something nice.”

He follows him down the hall and downstairs to the kitchen.  As with most things, his lack of communication on the day he spent with Trunks was easily forgiven.  Things with his uncle have always been easy. Uncle Raditz has always been there for him. When he was a teenager and his parents first started to argue and he first camped out in his attic.

“The ballet?  Since when do you like ballet?”

Since three days ago.

But he doesn’t.

“I’m interested in a dancer,” he says honestly because he is, even if it’s just for friendship.

He felt alive for the first time in a long time when he and Trunks were talking and laughing together.  Even without the brief connection and familiarity of their childhood summer, he would feel the same. Talking to another person that isn’t yelling at them to fire an order or that they had to eighty-six something.  Not arguing with his brother or trying not to feel as guilty as he does for not contacting his mother.

“A dancer?” he repeats.

“You gonna repeat everything I say?”

Uncle Raditz cuffs him lightly on the chin as he grins.  He isn’t doing much in the kitchen, just opening the pantry and fridge and scribbling down what they need on a sticky note.  Goten waits for him to finish, sighing impatiently.

“Do you have a suit, at least?”

He’s in the midst of counting how many protein bars he has left when he snorts a laugh.

“If you wore one of my suits, you’d look like that dude from the Talking Heads.”

That’s.  Fair. It would be the same if he borrowed one of Bardock’s suits since his cousin took after Uncle Raditz in the size and height department.  Goten remembers how he had to borrow his father’s suit for his high school graduation because he had put it off with everything going on and it had fit perfectly.  Because of course it did. He had to be like his dad in every physical sense as a reminder. He clenches his jaw and tries to let it go.

“What about Uncle Lapis?”

“Sausage casing.  My boy is tiny.”

He grins a bit about it and Goten has a brief, fleeting thought about wanting to be that goofy about someone.  Wanting to think about his partner fondly even when they weren’t there.

His mind flicks back to the suit and how all of his family’s stuff is in storage because their house is being rented out, because his family is splintered.  What isn’t in the storage unit, Gohan has, and he doesn’t want to get into another argument just because he needs a suit.

Uncle Raditz frowns as he scribbles the last of the grocery list down and sticks the note to the door of the fridge.

“I think one of your Uncle Turles’s friends owns a rental shop.  He owes me so I can get you one.”

“Who?  Uncle Turles or his friend?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He opts not to and is glad that he doesn’t have to worry about the suit now either.  His uncle is still looking at him, though.

“What?”

“So who’s this dancer?”

“A guy,” he says uneasily. “Who I met.  Who’s a dancer.”

Uncle Raditz nods slowly.

“Wow, he sounds amazing.”

Goten lets out an exasperated sigh and shoves him. “Okay, fine.  His name is Trunks, we apparently met at camp when we were kids and forgot about each other and he’s funny and cute and gave me a free ticket.”

This time his nod is more approving.

“What’s he look like?”

Goten shows him the selfie he took of himself on his phone.

“Hunh,” Uncle Raditz says. “He looks familiar.”

“I told you, we met at camp.”

He shakes his head. “Yes, because I remember every small kid my nephew met at camp over fifteen years ago.  No. He looks like someone I know. What’s his last name?”

Goten isn’t sure.  He figures he’ll see him listed in the playbill and will figure it out then but that detail wasn’t exchanged.

“Don’t know yet,” he admits. “We didn’t talk about that.  Why?”

“Oh, he just looks a bit like someone I used to know.”

That intrigues him.  Goten walks around to nudge him with his elbow.

“Is it someone from your shady past?”

Uncle Raditz swipes at him and he ducks.

“It wasn’t shady,” he growls.

“Well, how do I know?  No one tells me anything.”

He sighs and shakes his head.

“I did some things of dubious legality back in the day.  That’s all you have to know.”

Goten screws his mouth to the side, unsatisfied.

“Like what?”

“Like illegal betting pools on boxing matches,” he snaps and then he grimaces. “Oh, shit.”

He can tell that his uncle regrets saying it, but honestly that’s nothing compared to what Goten’s imagination had cooked up over the years.

“That’s it?  And here I thought you killed someone.”

“I will if you don’t stop being annoying.”

Uncle Raditz looks relieved, though, that Goten isn’t judging him.

“I assume Uncle Lapis knows?”

He snorts a laugh. “Oh, yeah.  He knows.”

That’s a weighted statement and part of it frustrates him.  Goten’s always been kept in the dark about most things before he was born.  He knows that his parents met in college and got married when they were barely twenty.  That Gohan was born five months later. That his father was so insistent that Chi-Chi not drop out of school that he dropped out instead and took on sole parenting duties.  And that instead of moving back to her father’s because he wanted her home, they moved in to a semi with his brother and then boyfriend so she could finish her courses.

“So I’m the last to know again?”

“Pan and Puck don’t know,” he says cheekily. “Videl doesn’t either unless your brother told her.”

No, Gohan’s good at keeping his mouth shut.  Good at keeping secrets. Goten tries to ride out the anger, hates that he’s still this mad.  Uncle Raditz must notice because he waves his hand in the air, clearly ready to change the subject.

“I’ll call Turles now and see if he can get something to you to look nice for your date.”

This is comfortable, this is easy.  Goten laughs.

“It’s not a date.”

--

Trunks always uses the excuse that he has to come do his laundry to come home to hide the fact that he really wants to be there.  That he really misses his family.

“Is there not a laundromat by your place?” his mom asks.

“No.”

There is, but it got robbed last week and the owners still haven’t recovered.  His place got robbed once when he forgot to bolt his door, but he’s learned and it’s not like he has anything to steal.

“Another reason you should move back,” she says, wrapping an arm around his waist.

“Mom.”

She should know about independence.  She had spurned her family’s wealth to try and make it on her own, living in a crappy apartment above a bowling alley and working thankless jobs while all of her money went to school and rent.  Somehow she met his dad and they danced around each other for years until they finally admitted they loved each other. Trunks thinks he had something to do about it since the day his mom now counts as their anniversary together is roughly six months before his birthday.

“I know, I know, but I worry about you, baby.”

She kisses his temple and Trunks screws his face up, feeling too old for the doting.  He moves from the laundry room to the kitchen. They’re doing alright now, but they’ll never approach the wealth his grandparents had and part of him wished for it, especially as a kid.  He would go to visit them on the high holidays and get lavished in presents even when the holiday didn’t call for them.

But Trunks can never let them know how crappy his place is.  Can never invite them over to see his pitiful apartment because he knows his mom would already be putting his clothes in suitcases to move him home.

At the kitchen table his sister sits with his father who is pretending to listen to her while she recounts the drama in her sixth grade class.  The second he comes to sit down, she switches subjects to pounce on him.

“I got a new dress for your show,” she says. “Mom got it on sale and it’s really pretty.”

“That’s great, Bra.”

His father sips his coffee and stares at him.

“You can’t do laundry at your place?” he asks.

“Closest laundromat is three blocks away.”

At least after the one that got robbed.

“How crappy is your neighborhood?”

“Uh.”

His mom swoops in to save the day even if she doesn’t realize it.

“It can’t be worse than the place I lived when I first moved out,” she says.  Sinks in the chair next to his father and kisses his cheek. “I had a coin-operated radiator.”

“Like, with money?” Bra asks, eyes wide. “Holy shit.”

No one bothers to correct her language or else be called a hypocrite.  Trunks was swearing fluently by the time he was three.

“One time, your father came over and he had converted his winnings from that night into quarters and he just had this big bag of them,” she laughs.  His father cringes, but says nothing. “He was just like ‘here. I’m sick of freezing.’”

That certainly sounded like his father.  His parents were alike as they were different and oftentimes Trunks thinks that he got the worst of both of them.  The best, too, maybe.

“It’s not that bad,” he says because it’s not quite a lie.

The conversation switches to his upcoming show and his mother enthuses about how excited she is for it.

“Still think you should get a solo,” his dad grouses.

His parents know about Mira and think it’s bullshit politics keeping him down.  Which is better than them blaming him for thinking with his libido, which. Would be hypocritical of both of them.

“One day,” he says half-heartedly.

Trunks supposes that he’s lucky in many ways.  He never worried about coming out to them. He worried about telling his father he didn’t want to box and instead wanted to do ballet.  His response had been, “You’ll fuck up your feet but I guess that’s better than fucking up your head” and would drive him to his lessons when his mom was working.

“Aren’t you near the end?” his mom asks. “I mean, thinking about going to teaching and stuff.”

She says it bluntly and it cuts, but.  She’s right. Trunks has probably peaked.  He’s too old to keep going and going and grinding.  Maybe he and ask his nonna to be a choreographer or something at the theatre where she works.

Maybe, maybe.  He can’t think about it now.  Twenty-five isn’t old, goddamnit, no matter what anyone says.

Trunks flexes his feet under the table as he lets his mind wander away from that.  It drifts to Goten and if he’ll really be there at his show. At how he got him food for free and bites his lip when he smiles and how his laugh is--shit, this is definitely a crush, isn’t it?  Trunks chews his own lip, trying to think of the last time he had a proper crush. Definitely not Mira. Maybe one of the other dancers? A guy from his apprenticeship? It’s kind of nice.

“You’re smiling,” Bra announces.

“Am I?”

She nods seriously. “Are you thinking about a boy?”

Yes.

“No.  I’m think about having a solo,” he says and he isn’t sure why.

Maybe because, for now, he wants to keep his crush to himself.

--

The ballet is as boring as Goten thought it would be, and he realizes too early on that there’s nearly an hour and a half of it.  He’s seated next to a girl who’s probably around the same age as the twins and she keeps turning to whisper to the woman next to her who he assumes is her mother.

The dancers are good, as far as he can tell, but he’s bored and his rented tux is scratchy and--then there he is.  He sees the flash of purple and keeps his eyes there whenever he’s onstage. Trunks is beautiful when he dances, graceful and strong and he can’t look away.

During the intermission, he runs out to a vendor to try and get him some flowers that are in season that he can afford.  Goten’s seen movies. He knows that you’re supposed to give performers flowers. It’s a bunch of wildflowers and a few of them are the same color as Trunks’s hair.

He barely pays attention to the story, but he knows it.  His eyes are only on Trunks. He moves like silk, like water, like all other poetic things that he can’t adequately describe.

Goten waits for him near the alley because he sees a sign on a door that says “cast only” and thinks he’ll come out there rather than the front.  He shivers because he forgot a coat and the hand holding the flowers is shaking and he probably shouldn’t have brought flowers, now. Shit.

The door opens and Trunks is there, still in his makeup but dressed down in his sweats and that boxy coat.  He looks tired and he’s flushed and sweaty, but his eyes light up when he sees Goten.

“You came,” he says and is clearly trying to hide his surprise.

“I did,” he says because he’s a sparkling conversationalist.  He holds out the bouquet.

“Aw, you bought me flowers?” he takes it, laughs. “Ooh, my favorite.  Miscellaneous.”

Goten laughs with him.  Wishes he knew how to say how beautiful he was when he danced.  But he doesn’t know how to say it. He did martial arts as a kid and rugby in high school.  He’s a meathead jock who only knows how to cook.

“You were amazing,” he says instead.

Trunks smiles. “Thanks.”

Goten realizes that his hand is still holding the bouquet and he retracts it.

“I couldn’t stop watching you,” his traitorous tongue says.

Trunks’s eyebrows arch. “Really?”

“Really.  You were. Wow.”

Kill me now.  Kill me now.

“I’m glad.”

Is he?  His smile reaches his eyes and, God, he looks even better up close.  He has his stage makeup on and his eyes are glowing and Goten is seized with the desire to kiss him.  It’s been so long since he’s felt that. With work and everything, he hasn’t had time for any kind of relationship, even a hook up.  But, God, he wants to see if his lips are as soft as they look.

“Trunks!”

The moment passes and the girl from the audience dashes down the alley, a puffy coat now over her dress.  She runs, arms outstretched, and Trunks catches her in his arms.

“Careful.  I got flowers.”

She pulls back and adopts a look of suspicion. “Who gave you flowers?”

Goten swallows and lifts his hand. “I did.”

The girl turns and, even in the dim light, Goten can see that she and Trunks have the same nose and high forehead.

“A-ha!” she cries.  She turns and punches him in the side. “I knew you were thinking about a boy!”

Was he?  Thinking about him?  Goten feels something warm in his chest despite the cold and lack of jacket.  The man and woman from his row walk down the alleyway and he realizes that his ticket sat him with Trunks’s family.  The woman joins the girl in hugging him.

“Baby, you were fantastic!”

The man, ostensibly his father, pulls a face. “Romeo sucked.  It should have gone to you.”

“He didn’t suck, dad.”

“He wasn’t as good as you.” He sniffs at the air imperiously.

Goten tries to picture literally anyone else in the performance and they were good, he figures.  They danced well, but his eyes were on Trunks the entire time. His dad was right. It should have gone to him.

He wants to chime in but he feels like an intruder, suddenly, on his family meeting him after a show.  Distantly, it reminds him of meeting Gohan after some quiz bowl or science fair to congratulate him. Goten, the hyper little brother, grabbing onto his hand and swinging his arm back and forth.  His mother talking about how of course he won because he’s a genius.  His father laughing. He pushes it away because he can’t keep dwelling on this because it’s gone past unhealthy.  Can’t keep being this mad or feeling this guilty.

Trunks’s mother notices Goten and glances slyly from him to the bouquet.

“Who’s this?” she asks.

“Goten,” Trunks says. “Uh, he’s my new friend.”

He nods and meets Trunks’s eye.  Gives a smile.

“And I should go.  Um. You were amazing...which I already said.  Right.”

Trunks walks forward, away from his family, and touches his wrist.

“Text me,” he says. “When you’re free.  We’ll hang.”

Goten nods. “For sure.”

The touch on his wrist lingers for that moment longer before Trunks lets go and Goten leaves to catch the bus and leave for him to be beset by his obviously curious family.

--

Goten is extremely busy, as it turns out.  Trunks dances and dances and comes out from rehearsals and performances to find out that he’s still at work.  Their relationship becomes text-driven. He doesn’t have a picture of Goten to make as a contact so he temporarily puts a picture of the bouquet he got him.  He didn’t have to and he did. Trunks doesn’t have anywhere to put it in his apartment so he hangs it upside down to dry. Give his apartment a little bit of color.

He’s certain he has more than a bit of a crush.  Goten is terrible at texting but he tries and he sends about fifteen typo corrections when autocorrect screws him over and Trunks loves it.

Romeo and Juliet closes and he’s cast as a snowflake in The Nutcracker because they want to push boundaries and it means that he gets to dance en pointe.  He’s trained for it, but never been cast for it and he’s excited.

(Goten): that’s good?

(You): very

He tries not to let it think that it’s because of Mira, who still watches him as he dances, and he can pay attention because he knows so much of the choreography already.  They always do The Nutcracker at Christmastime and they always start rehearsals in October and November and at least he gets to be something other than a party guest or a member of the Rat King’s army for once.

One day he’s leaving, tired and aching but feeling whole and good and--there he is.  Goten is standing outside of the theatre in a coat holding a tray with two cups of coffee.

“Hey,” he says. “I had a day off where I could do more than just sleep.”

Being a chef isn’t glamorous, he’s realized.  It’s about as glamorous as being a dancer but with less bruised feet.  Or maybe just as much.

“Why do you work so much?” Trunks asks.

He takes the cup.  Knows now why Goten randomly texted him asking how he liked his coffee a few days ago.  It’s thoughtful. He’s thoughtful. And sweet. And smoking hot.

“I have to.  I have to show dedication if I want to be an executive chef.  If I want to eventually own my own restaurant.”

“You want to own a restaurant?”

Goten nods and takes a sip of his drink.

“I’m really good at flavor pairings.  Not just classic ones, but new and different and things you might not think would go together.”

His dark eyes dance as he talks and Trunks realizes that he must feel the same way about cooking that he does about dance.  His feet are screaming and his legs ache for relief, but he walks with him rather than say that. They head to the park and Goten ditches the coffee tray in a trashcan near the entrance.

“My grandma is a butcher so I’d like to integrate that in a little, too.  I dunno. Haven’t planned it fully, but. It’s an eventual dream.”

Trunks nods and then cocks his head to the side.  This grandma is the first mention of Goten’s family and proof that he didn’t just spring, fully formed, from ocean spray.  He follows the thread.

“So is the rest of your family do the culinary thing?”

Goten pauses and taps his finger on the side of his cup.  Sighs.

“No.  Just her.  My grandpa and uncle are mechanics.  My brother is an astronomy professor.”

“And your parents?”

Another tap-tap-tap.  Trunks tries to help by doing what he does best: talk.

“My dad used to be a boxer,” he says, speaking quickly. “and my mom is this genius engineer.”

Goten sips his coffee and finally says, “My mom is an immigration lawyer and my dad fixes furniture.”

That doesn’t sound too bad, but there might be more.  He knows not everyone can take a coming out as well as his parents did.

“Do you live near here?” he asks instead.

Goten makes a fiddly gesture with his free hand.

“Sorta,” he says. “It’s not far.”

“Lucky.  I’d kill to live closer to the theatre.  I would get to sleep in a little.”

“I’d offer you a place to spend the night, but I don’t have that authority.”

Trunks watches him, holding his cup between his hands and taking a sip.  The steam of it floods his face, warming the chilled tip of his nose.

“Roommates?”

“I live with my uncle and I can’t just take cute boys home.”

Trunks frowns and cocks his head to the side. “He have a problem with you being gay?”

Goten stops and bursts out into laughter, loud and sharp.  A few people lingering in the park at this hour look their way as if they sense something is wrong with him.

“What?” Trunks asks, trying not to sound annoyed.

Goten shakes his head and tries to stop laughing.

“N-no.  My uncle is gay,” he says and then amends, “Are.  Both of them. But my younger cousins are only, like, eleven and the attic bedroom isn’t exactly soundproof.”

“Oh.” He can recover quickly, at least. “My apartment isn’t either, really.  But no kids, I don’t think.”

Goten nods and tosses his apparently empty cup into another trashcan.  Trunks holds onto his, savoring the warmth. He thinks about what he said.

“So you think I’m cute?”

“Judging by the way you’re smiling, you know you’re cute.”

Trunks steps closer to him.  They’re close enough in height, but Goten’s a little taller.  Broader, too. Trunks inherited his body typed directly from his dad and always felt it made him too big to properly be a dancer.  He starved himself for a bit in his teen years but it resulted in nothing but him collapsing during his apprenticeship. He’s recovered, he’s sure, but it still comes out a little.  But now he thinks it’s a positive way, liking how Goten is a bit bigger than him.

“Oh, I do.  But I like hearing it.  For the record, I think you’re cute, too.”

Trunks leans in, wanting permission to kiss him.  He’s liked their conversations over the past week and the flowers and coffee and.  Also he’s been lonely. Proud of himself for not going back to Mira but lonely and cold.  So cold.

“You can kiss me,” Goten says, “if you want to.”

He presses his lips against his as a test.  Goten doesn’t seem happy about that because he grabs his jacket and pulls him closer.  Kisses him hungrily. Trunks drops his coffee on the sidewalk around lets his hands go into his hair.  He thinks he might be that touch-starved but the feeling of him against him is so intoxicating that he almost can’t breathe.

They break apart, both gasping for air.  He bends down to pick the cup up, knowing there’s nothing he can do about the coffee seeping into the cold cement of the sidewalk.

“Okay, we need to do that more,” Goten says. “Soon.”

Trunks nods. “Yeah.”

“Like now.”

He lets himself smile. “Yeah.”

--

The two of them haven’t said anything outright but Goten considers himself taken.  Not that he has any other romantic prospects banging down the door, but he likes the thought of it.  Whenever he’s free again and Trunks is free at the same time, he’ll ask him to be his boyfriend. It seems too personal to be done over text.

He lies in bed, recovering from a double at the restaurant, when the hatch to the attic opens.  Uncle Raditz wedges himself in the opening and places his elbows on the attic floor to lean against his hand.

“It’s November fifth,” he tells him.

Goten stares back, knowing the gravity of it.  Uncle Raditz must know because he holds his hands up in defense.

“I’m just reminding you of the date.  What you do with that information is your prerogative.” He starts to head down and then adds, “oh, and Lapis is making some vegetarian eggs benedict if you wanna come down for breakfast.”

He disappears and the hatch is closed and Goten stares at his phone lying on the table by his bed.  He rises up on his side and reaches for it. He said some rotten things to his mom when she left. That’s what’s stopped him from talking to her.  The words between them that still hung there, never addressed. His mother staring past him at his father saying, “Fix this, Goku, because I’m not waiting around anymore.”  He finds her name in his contacts and presses the green call button. Holds his breath while it rings.

“Goten?” his mom sounds surprised.

“Happy birthday, mama,” he says.

To everyone in the outside world, she’s mom but when they’d be home at their most vulnerable, she was mama.  When Goten was angriest last year and before in his rebellious, mopey teen years, he would privately call her Chi-Chi to distance himself from her.  But right now, when she bursts into tears because her youngest son has called her after eleven months of silence, she’s his mama.

He asks how things are on Fire Mountain and how Papa Ox is.  She asks him about his job and if he’s going to marry someone.

“I’m seeing someone now,” he says, “but we just got together so don’t you start.”

“What’s he like?  What’s his family do?”

It’s all so normal that he almost wants to start crying himself.  She scolds him arguing with Gohan without addressing the cause. He doesn’t bring up his father.  If he’s contacted any of them, it would be her. He wants to know but he doesn’t at the same time.

“Have you been to the house?”

“No, but I’m sure Gohan has.”

He doesn’t want to talk about this so he asks her what she’s doing for her birthday.  The conversation ends well enough and neither of them acknowledge the break in contact.  It feels good but hollow, but Goten thinks they’ve made headway, a little. He puts his phone down and lies back down until his stomach rumbles and he’s reminded of the fact that his uncle is making breakfast.  With heavy legs, he hauls himself out of bed.

He walks into the kitchen and looks at his uncle’s expectant face.

“I called her,” he says.  Sinks into a chair.

Bardock passes him a full plate and a fork.

“Okay,” Uncle Raditz says.  He smirks at him over his empty plate. “So instead let’s talk about your hot dancer boyfriend.”

Goten pauses, his fork midway cutting through his egg.

“Can we meet him?” Sapphire asks.

“Is he really a dancer?” Bardock asks.

“Will he come over?” Azurite chimes in.

Goten sighs, hating whenever he’s the center of attention.  He finishes slicing through his eggs benedict and puts it in his mouth.  The bacon, he realizes, is actually mushroom and he kind of wants to steal the idea.  He chews and swallows before answering them.

“Maybe,” he says.

That doesn’t please his cousins, apparently, who all begin talking at once.  Goten casts a glare at Uncle Raditz who just smirks into his cup of coffee.

--

There’s only so much Trunks can do to make his apartment presentable.  He can fold and put away the laundry from the bags he brought to his parents’ house.  He can’t do anything about how cold it is or the bad lighting but, he tries. Goten is coming over to cook him dinner and maybe spend the night.  Maybe.

They haven’t slept together yet, but he’s thought about it, jerked off to it.  Pictured him in his bed, pictured him coming undone beneath him.

He puts effort in himself as well.  With rehearsals, he never has time to actually try with his appearance.  He takes as hot of a shower as he can. His muscles ache and he yearns for a bath but his tub won’t hold the water and it never gets hot enough.  He takes time to actually comb out his hair and digs through his unitards and leggings and sweatpants to find something at least cute. He finds a pair of worn jeans and he tugs a pair of thick socks over them because his apartment is an icebox.  Goten is warm, though. It’s like he generates warmth. Trunks has a circulation problem that leaves his feet and hands freezing.

He pulls on a t-shirt and pulls a sweater on over it and, running a hand through his hair, he hopes it’s alright.  On the superficial level, he knows he looks good in anything, especially the gray sweater and the purple shirt underneath that doesn’t clash with his hair.

His phone buzzes.

(Goten): i’m here!

He tells him to just walk up since the door doesn’t lock and gives him his apartment number.  The knock comes low on the door, almost too low, and Trunks opens it with a questioning brow. Goten stands on the other side, grinning over an armful of plastic bags.

“Hey, sorry I had to kick the door.  My hands were full.”

Trunks relieves him of a few of his packages and shakes his head.

“Don’t worry about it.  It’s kind of a shitty door anyway.”

He shifts the bags to one side to slide the deadbolt over since that, at least, is very much not shitty.  Goten follows him across the floor of what would serve as a living room if Trunks had a couch and to the kitchen.

“Cool, open concept,” Goten says in a sweet goofy voice and he nearly laughs.

Together, they dump the bags on the counter and Trunks leans against it, feeling self-conscious.

“It’s a shit hole, I know,” he says.

“But it’s yours,” Goten finishes. “I understand.”

Does he?  He said he lives with his uncles but, then again, why would he if he didn’t have to?

“Yeah, I guess independence is a thing in my family, even if I ever so breathed the desire to come home, my mom would materialize in my apartment to help me start packing.”

Goten laughs. “Yeah, mine too.”

There’s a pause after the sentence and Trunks remembers how he never really hears Goten talk about his parents.  It isn’t a coming out thing, he’d revealed in text, but he said that it’s personal and, for now, Trunks will not let his curiosity get the better of him.

“I wasn’t sure what you had so I got a bunch of stuff,” Goten says.

“Anything I can do to help?”

From one bag he pulls out some vegetables.

“Can you dice these to make a mirepoix?”

“A what?”

He chews his lip, cheeks reddening a bit. “Sorry, uh.  Just dice the carrots, celery, and onion. It’ll be the base of the soup.”

“Oh, alright.” Trunks cocks his head to the side. “You can take your coat off.”

“I would, but this place is freezing.”

Trunks pouts, “But that parka must be hard to cook in.  And, if you keep it on, then I won’t be able to warm you up.”

Goten looks at him for a moment before he laughs and strips it off to reveal the thin henley he’s wearing underneath.  Trunks swallows and glances away. He takes a knife out of the drawer and begins cutting the onion. Goten’s hand comes over both of his.

“You have to take the skin off, first.”

“Oh, right.  Sorry. I literally survive off of bone broth and off-brand SlimFast except when I’m home so.”

“It’s fine.”

Goten smiles and he smiles back.  It feels natural, standing next to each other.  He shows Goten how to light his stove and he gets the pot on.  Trunks’s knife work is awkward and uneven, but Goten says that it’ll be fine and that it’s good for his first time.  He feels quite accomplished.

“So you’re a snowflake,” Goten says. “That’s pretty cool.”

He grins, liking how he’s trying.

“Yeah, but I think the choreographer just did so I’d sleep with him without being too obvious.”

And then his mouth has to ruin it.  Goten stirs a spoon in the pot and Trunks is amazed that three different vegetables alone can smell that good.  His mouth starts watering and he’s reminded how hungry he is.

“Why?” Goten asks, “other than, you know, how hot you are.”

He’s chopping up chicken, the knife good in his hands.  Trunks watches him for a moment and then answers without thinking.

“Because I used to sleep with him.”

He shuts his mouth and curses.

“Why?” he asks again.

Goten chops down on the joint of a chicken thigh a bit too hard and the sound echoes through the cold, empty apartment.

“Because I was lonely,” Trunks admits. “And he was married, but.  When he approached me first, he said he and his wife had an understanding.  Like, an open marriage.”

Goten’s hand relaxes and he nods.

“And did they?”

“No, but I didn’t realize this for...months.  Until she came in the middle of rehearsal to accuse him of having an affair.  I called it off after that. His wife owns the theatre and I didn’t want to get kicked out and.  I felt guilty. And lied to.”

Goten dumps the chicken in the pot and rinses both his hands and the knife in the sink.  He pumps some soap in his hand and washes them. He takes a rag by the sink to wipe them.

“You were,” he says. “You were lied to.  That’s shitty. And he still...wants you?”

Trunks nods. “But I won’t.  And I haven’t. For what it’s worth.  After I found out the open marriage thing was a lie.  I couldn’t do it anymore. Not knowing that I was hurting someone.”

Goten turns the heat down so the soup can do its thing and he turns to him.

“I’m glad.  You’re. Fuck, I suck at talking but.  I’m glad. You’re good. You’re. Shit.”

Trunks laughs and kisses him because he can.  Goten kisses back, fingers messing with the metal buttons on his jacket.

“Um…” Goten says once they break away. “This’ll sound dumb but I...was wondering if I could call you...my boyfriend.”

His cheeks redden again in embarrassment and Trunks tries not to laugh even though that’s his immediate reaction.  It’s so innocent and sweet, almost as if they’re lovestruck teens and not in their mid-twenties.

“Sure,” he says. “Of course.  I. Like that. Boyfriends.”

“You’re laughing.”

“I am not,” he laughs.

Goten kisses him again, catching him off-guard.

“We’re going to eat the soup when it’s done,” he says, voice low, “and then I’ll suck your brain out through your dick.”

Trunks grins against his mouth.  Not so innocent, then.

--

Goten thinks the sex is so good because it’s been so long, but he can’t tell.  Maybe it’s because Trunks’s apartment is so cold that even the delicious soup he made can’t warm them adequately.  The bed is warm with them both on it, warmer with Trunks’s breath hot against his throat. His hands are freezing, thought, and making him shiver.  It’s a study of extremes. Hot and cold.

“Sorry about my feet and hands,” he murmurs. “It’s a circulation thing.”

Trunks’s feet are a mess in general.  They’re bruised and a bit bloody.

“Everyone thinks dancers are hot ‘til they see their feet,” he says.

“I think feet in general are gross,” Goten admits.

Trunks laughs and presses a wet kiss against his throat. “They are.  Hey, did I ever tell you my foot theory?”

They’re naked in his bed, ready to fuck, but sure.  Goten shakes his head.

“Tell me.”

“There’s no in-betweens with feet.  No one is just ‘okay’ with feet. You either have the correct answer, disgust, or you’ve got a foot fetish.  No middle ground.”

It’s a good theory and Goten laughs.  Captures his mouth again. Luckily, there’s no more discussions of feet.  It’s him telling Trunks it’s okay to use his fingers, his mouth. Trunks warning him that the lube is as cold as the rest of the apartment as he tries, in vain, to warm the tube up with his hands.  It’s mouths and limbs and reciting Trunks’s name like a prayer as his breath clouds out visibly in front of him.

Afterwards they pull apart and Trunks deals with the condom while Goten cleans himself up.  Maybe it’s been so long, but he feels almost euphoric even after the afterglow faded.

“Are you staying the night?” Trunks asks when he comes back.

Goten nods not only because it’s a long way home with a bunch of pots and pans.  He can’t think of anywhere he wants to be except for this bed.

“Yeah, lemme just text my uncle.  He worries.”

Trunks nods. “Okay.”

While he sends the message, he sees Trunks rummaging around in the drawers under his bed and pulls out a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt advertising a boxing gym.

“Here,” he says. “Pajamas.”

Goten puts his phone down and smiles, taking them.  They’re warm and smell like that spicy, citrus-y spray he wears and then Trunks is in bed with him, cold hands and feet and all and he wraps his arms around him.

“This is nice,” he says quietly.

Trunks peppers little kisses down his neck and Goten tilts his head so he can get at the skin more easily.  He feels at ease, like he had been holding his breath for so long but this is good.

“When we go into position, we’re told to hold something big but fragile,” Trunks mumbles sleepily.  Tightens his hold just a little. “Valuable.”

Goten lets out a soft, breathy laugh and relaxes into his hold.  Lets himself drift to sleep.

--

Goten figures he ought to win grandson of the year award (since he’s long since been out of the running for son of the year) for taking time on his day off to help his grandma instead of boinking his hot dancer boyfriend.  In fairness, Trunks is in rehearsals until seven and they have plans afterwards, but still. Gold star material.

Nana Gine doesn’t really need too much help with the groceries but she makes a big deal out of it anyway.  Sometimes he looks at her and it’s weird thinking of her as his grandmother. His grandfather, either. He refers to them that way but, honestly, the closest he and Gohan ever got was calling them Nana Gine and Papa Bardock.  It doesn’t help that they became grandparents when they weren’t even forty.

Goten takes the majority of the bags out of the carriage to arrange in the trunk.

“You’re a good boy,” Nana Gine says, patting his arm.

He never feels like it lately with his family so he smiles at the praise.  He offered to drive but she was insistent.

“Hey, Nana,” he says once they get moving. “When did you realize you were in love with Papa?”

She doesn’t look at him right away as she back out of the space but then she’s looking at him with a bemused look.

“Is this about your new boy?”

“No!” he says too quickly. “We just.  No. I was just. Curious.”

She doesn’t stop looking amused and he wants to sink into the seat.  It’s far, far too early to determine if he’s in love with Trunks or not.

“It was weird with us because we didn’t have time really to date since I got pregnant with your uncle so young, but.  I don’t know. I guess it was after Radi was born and I saw how Bardock was with him, trying so hard and. I fell in love.”

She smiles a bit and Goten’s glad for it the same way he’s glad for Uncle Raditz and Lapis.  Two couples in his family that aren’t fractured. Gohan and Videl, too, probably.

“Is he at the garage today?” he asks.

She nods, turns on her blinker to go right. “Yep.  He’s going to wear himself out. I keep telling him to start thinking about retiring and handing it over to your uncle but you know how stubborn your grandpa is.”

Goten nods.  Maybe that’s where he gets it.  Why it took so long to call his mother.

“But he’s still a few years off, right?”

“Oh, yes, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be looking forward.” Nana Gine sighs and shakes her head. “That man…”

She says it fondly, though, and a traitorous part of Goten’s mind pictures himself saying that about Trunks.  Shit, he has it bad.

They turn down the street where his grandparents’ house is, just a block over from his uncle’s house.  His old house is a few more blocks down with Gohan’s house next door. Everything in a comforting grid.  It felt good until it didn’t. Goten waits for her to park to get his seatbelt out and go around to the trunk.  He hears his grandmother make a small, startled sound and he goes around to the front of the car.

“Nana?”

She’s looking at the front door and Goten follows her gaze.  He understands why she made that noise. Because sitting on her stoop, looking sad and somehow small, is his father.

Chapter Text

Goten thinks he should be handling things better.  At the sight of his father, he had barely muttered an “Excuse me,” as he pushed past him into Nana Gine’s house.  He heard him ask her if he can stay here and his grandmother had said, “As if you even have to ask.” Maybe she forgives him easily because he’s her son, her youngest, just like his mother forgave him for what he said when she left and for not speaking to her.  His dad looked pretty cut up, not that he noticed.

He tries to ignore it.  Tries to ignore him living a couple blocks down.  He works and he works and, when he’s free, he spends time with Trunks.  Even his uncle’s house isn’t safe because his father can just drop by.

Which feels ridiculous.

He doesn’t hate his father, but he’s avoiding him because he thinks the anger will come up.  The way he left him--left everyone. How he does that. Lets people get dependent on him and then leaves.  No one asked Goten if he wanted to be alone. Sure, he wasn’t a kid, but everyone cared about themselves and left him aside.  Everyone except Uncle Raditz.

He wants to get past it.  He knows he has someone else to care about him now even if that someone else is tapping their ice cold feet against his bare back.

“Put some damn socks on, Trunks.”

He grins cheekily, but he sits up so he can hold onto him from behind.  They’re in Trunks’s apartment because Goten can’t take him home but the bus fare and how it’s an icebox makes him want to risk being teased at breakfast.

“You alright?” he asks. “You seem tense.”

“Do I?”

“Mmhmm.  I know bodies well.  I can feel it...here.”

Trunks begins to rub his shoulders, thumbs digging in on either side of his spine.  Goten lets out a content little sigh and leans back.

“It’s my lower back,” he says. “From work.  The shoulders...home stuff.”

It’s all he can say.  He doesn’t want to lay this all on Trunks, especially not so early in their relationship.  But…

“Got it,” Trunks says and places a kiss between his shoulder blades.

He continues his ministrations and Goten arches his back into it.  His hands go lower, thumbs digging in to the sore and tired muscles in his lower back.

“Hey,” he says after a moment, “Would you want to spend the night some time?”

“Like, at your place?”

He nods. “Yeah.  I mean, we’d have to be quiet but it’s closer to the theatre and it’s.  Warmer.”

Even in the attic, it’s warmer than Trunks’s apartment where he can sometimes see his breath when he sleeps there.

“Okay,” Trunks says after a moment. “Bend a bit more.  It’ll open up your lower back.”

Goten does as he says, hearing something pop in his back.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.  I’ll let you know when I’m able to.”

With their schedules, it makes sense.  Sometimes he goes day without seeing his boyfriend, which adds to the newness of it all.  The light and airiness. It feels so natural and he’s a bit nervous. He looks over his shoulder to let Trunks kiss him as he continues to rub his back.

And it goes again, three days without seeing Trunks because of rehearsals and his work schedule and Goten hates it, but he can’t hate it too much.  When he’s at the restaurant, he’s not home so close to his father and all the things they haven’t said to each other between them.

He leaves work one night, carrying his knife bag and working his shoulders out.  In the cold chill of the night, his ears ring from the sudden silence. He ducks his chin into the zipped up collar of his parka and begins to head to the bus stop.

“Rah!”

Goten jumps as someone leaps at him from the shadows.  Trunks tosses back his head in laughter and then spins on one foot.  The messenger bag he’s wearing swings wildly as it does but he doesn’t lose balance.

“You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry.  I thought there’d be more people leaving the restaurant but you were by yourself so I struck.”

“Evil.”

He grins victoriously, looking luminous and beautiful under the streetlight and Goten is suddenly not startled or annoyed.  Sometimes, when they spend a few days apart, he forgets just how good-looking he is.

“So, I figured it’s time I took you up on your offer,” Trunks says. “And I was gonna go in but this place is so bougie that I figured they’d laugh my ass back to Bensonhurst.”

Goten gives a chuckle. “Yeah.  It’s fancier than the other place.”

They fall in step towards the bus stop and Goten reaches his free hand out to hold his.  He’s glad Trunks is wearing gloves because he can only imagine how cold they would be when exposed to the winter chill.

“Did you?” he asks, thinking back to what he said earlier. “Decide to take me up on the offer, I mean.”

“I was on my long ass bus ride home after dancing for nearly eleven hours and I realized that I just.  Wanted to be with you. And closer to the theatre.”

They approach the overhang and Goten scoots close to him. “You were close.  That was almost sweet.”

Another grin.  And then it fades a little.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m kind of manic right now.  It. It gets like that sometimes.”

It’s all in what he isn’t saying and Goten nods, squeezing his hand in comfort.  The bus rumbles towards them and they board it, manage to find a seat near the front.  Trunks rests his head on his shoulder in the seat.

“Let me know when it’s close to your stop,” he says. “I’m never on this side of town.”

Goten nods and reaches to put an arm around him.  He’s missed his closeness. God, he thinks he’s hooked.  The smell of him, the feel of him against him. Trunks is the only uncomplicated thing in his life and he cherishes that.  He nudges him when they hit his stop and then they’re down the sidewalk and standing in front of his uncle’s house. He wonders what Trunks thinks of it.  It’s dark, though, and he shouldn’t expect much.

“The stairs are through the kitchen,” he tells him in a low voice. “It’s kind of a weird design.”

It’s too dark to see the pictures on the wall as they move as quietly through the downstairs as they can.  He leads Trunks upstairs and down the hall. He tells him which step on the ladder creaks and they make it up without waking anyone up.

“It’s warmer in this fucking attic than it is in my apartment,” Trunks whispers. “And it’s still cold.”

“Let me warm you up, then.”

It’s a bad line but it gets him to crack a grin.  Goten pulls him in for a kiss and Trunks drops his messenger bag to the floor.  It’s so cold that they undress hastily and get under Goten’s covers as quickly as they can.

“You have to be quiet,” Goten says to him as evenly as he can, which is hard with Trunks’s fingers in his ass.

“Oh, I’ll be quiet.”

He bites back a moan and says. “Seriously.  No screaming like at your place.”

“Okay.” Trunks kisses his neck and works his fingers a bit. “It’ll be like that movie.   A Quiet Place.  Did you ever think that anyone was fucking when the aliens or monsters or whatever ripped them apart like tissue paper?”

It’s so strange hearing this while Trunks is doing that to him and Goten shivers into his touch.

“Not sure.”

He kisses him again and, finally, he stops talking.

--

At first, Trunks has a moment of panic of waking up in a strange bed, but it fades once he sees Goten asleep next to him.  Right. He spent the night. He’s in Goten’s bedroom in Goten’s house and it isn’t anything bad. It’s good. So good. The best thing to happen to him in a long while.

He kisses Goten’s shoulder.  He rolls over and opens his eyes.

“Usually it takes a lot to wake me up.”

“I know.  I’ve been there, Mr. Log.”

Trunks kisses him again.  Presses their foreheads together.

“I’m hungry,” Goten admits. “Let’s get breakfast.”

Truly he wants to take a shower and he’s sure that Goten does too because he smells like Trunks and whatever lingering smells from the restaurant but instead they climb down the ladder and go downstairs.  The kitchen is full and, at first, he isn’t sure what to do. He’s entertained the notion about meeting Goten’s family but never thought of the reality of it. Seated at the table are two kids around Bra’s age with frighteningly green eyes and a slim guy with straight, shiny black hair.  A huge guy who somewhat resembles Goten is at the stove making pancakes.

“Good mornin’,” the big guy says. “Sleep well?”

Goten’s cheeks tint red. “Yeah.”

They approach the table and Trunks wonders if he should let Goten introduce him or just do it himself.

“Where’s Bardy?” Goten asks. “I figure he’d want to join in on the interrogation.”

“Asleep,” his other uncle says with a roll of his supernaturally blue eyes. “You know him.”

“I’m Trunks,” he says, startling himself at the sound of his voice. “I mean, hey.  I’m Trunks. Goten’s boyfriend.”

“The dancer,” the girl says. “Can you do some, like, moves?”

Goten glares at her. “He’s not a performing monkey, Sapph.”

Trunks shakes his head. “No, dude.  I love performing.”

It’s true and it’s nice to have an audience that won’t judge him like Mira or his fellow dancers.  He slips into first position and moves through to fifth. He stands in arabesque and the twins burst into applause.

“Wow,” the girl, Sapph, says. “Goten got a boyfriend way cooler than him.”

The boy nods seriously.  Trunks slips into an empty chair next to him and kisses his cheek.

“I think he’s plenty cool.”

The twins erupt in squeals of laughter.

“Can you not?” Goten asks and then sighs. “Anyway, those are my cousins, Azurite and Sapphire.  And my Uncle Lapis and my Uncle Raditz.”

Trunks nods his heads with each introduction.

“Are you off today?” Raditz asks.  He plops a plate of pancakes on the table along with a bottle of syrup.

Goten shakes his head. “I’m going in for four.”

“I have to be at the theatre in an hour,” Trunks says because he can’t not talk even if no one asked him.

Knows he has to leave, but doesn’t want to.  Likes this. It feels familiar and nice--natural.  Being introduced to family. Sitting with Goten at the table.

“What are you working, babe?”

Lapis is about to answer but instead his face twitches and lets out a series of sneezes.

“You alright?”

He sniffs through his nose. “I’m fine.  I’m going in after I drop the twins off and I’ll be at the preserve until probably around six.”

“Are you coming down with something?” Raditz asks with a frown.

He waves a hand. “You know I never get sick.  Last time was, well...because of Bardy.”

It takes Trunks a moment to realize what he means by that and then it clicks.

“Well, take it easy at work.”

“There is no ‘taking it easy’ at my job.”

“Humor me, babe.”

Trunks watches the easiness between them, a love still there after so many years and it makes him feel good.  He wants that some day. A husband, a family. He looks at Goten, his mind racing ahead and entertaining the possibility.

Hold your fucking horses, dude.

He clamps down on his errant thoughts because it’s far, far too early.  Lapis nods his farewells, gives Raditz a kiss and shuffles the twins out the door.  He pauses at the doorway to sneeze again as he leaves. Trunks notices the backpacks Azurite and Sapphire are wearing and thinks it must be close to school being out for the holidays.  Is Bra still in school? Shit. He’s been so busy, he’s barely gone to visit home.

Raditz and Goten are shoveling pancakes into their mouths and Trunks wishes his career path didn’t make him have to have an aversion to carbs because they smell amazing.

“Are you taking Bardy to the garage?” Goten asks, mouth full.

His uncle nods. “Yeah.  If he ever gets up.”

Without saying anything else, Raditz gets to his feet and walks to the bottom of the stairs.

“Bardy!  Pancakes!”

There’s no answer from upstairs.  He sighs and Goten puts his hands over his ears.  Trunks wonders if he should do the same.

“BARDOCK LAZURITE GERO-SON!  GET DOWN HERE!”

The yell isn’t angry, just loud, and Trunks can see why Goten covered his ears.  He rubs his own.

“I should start heading out,” he says. “Thanks for letting me stay the night.”

Goten turns and gives him a syruppy kiss.

“Have fun at rehearsals,” Raditz says. “Or whatever you say to dancers.  Goten, what are you doing ‘til work?”

He breaks the kiss and shrugs.

“Not sure.”

“We’ll be at the garage so you’ll have the place to yourself.  You could watch a movie.” He smirks and says, “Maybe A Quiet Place.”

Trunks chokes on his own spit.  Goten wasn’t kidding about keeping it down, then.

--

I need another tux.  Fuck.

Goten shoves his phone down in his pocket as he dashes downstairs to find his uncle.  He should have expected to be invited to Trunks’s performance but he’s still caught off-guard.  He stops at the bottom of the stairs in the small hallway when he sees the back of his father’s head.  He’s sitting at the table, talking to Uncle Raditz.

He hangs back and crouches down behind the wall the doorway is in, out of sight.  In the week or so since his father’s reappearance, he’s managed to avoid him and avoid that confrontation.  He knows he’s an adult and can’t ignore him forever but he thought that day wouldn’t come so soon.

Goten presses himself against the wall and listens.

“Where were you staying?” Uncle Raditz asks.

“With Krillin.”

Krillin, his father’s best friend.  And, because Goten’s world is so small, Krillin is married to Uncle Lapis’s sister.  Did she tell him and everyone knew and this was a big joke on him? No, he thinks. No, if Uncle Raditz knew or his grandparents knew, they wouldn’t keep it from him.  And his uncle is asking now anyway.

“What the fuck did you do, Kakarrot?” he asks. “It’s been a year.”

His father sighs and Goten can picture him shifting in his seat, drooping his shoulders.  All things he himself does. Because he can’t just share his face and frame. He has to be his father’s fucking clone.

“I drank for a bit of it,” he admits. “Had a really bad bender where I woke up in the park and this woman jogging found me and...it really floors me at the kindness of strangers, y’know?  She asked for my wallet to help me remember who I was.”

“Shit.”

“Honestly.  And there was a picture of my family in it.  And she goes ‘who’s that?’ and I go, ‘oh that’s Chi-Chi, the love of my life.’  And she points to Gohan and I say that he’s my son who’s an astronomy professor at Orange Star University.  And she points to Goten and. I completely blanked on his name. I forgot my own son.”

Goten feels his jaw clench and he breathes through it.  Reminds himself that he’s an adult and he isn’t like this.  He doesn’t have a temper.

“Kakarrot.”

“I know.  And it’s then that I realized how deeply I screwed up.  Not just then, but before. So I cleaned up and I went to Fire Mountain.” He hears his father chuckle and he can imagine him shaking his head at himself. “I thought it’d be like before.  Remember when we had a rough bit a few years back and she went to stay at Gohan’s? Only a couple weeks and we ironed stuff out and everything was fine again. I thought.”

That’s his dad.  Always looking on the bright side.  Always blithely brushing things under the rug.  Goten knows it drives his mom up a wall. She’s the queen of hypotheticals.  “Take away your kids, Goku, and what are you?” “Your husband,” he’d say. “And take me away?” “That’s a trick question, right?  I’d be dead.” His mom talks about where their lives would be if this or that happened but his father always said the same thing: he’d marry a girl named Chi-Chi and have two kids.  Goten used to love his optimism, but now he’s as annoyed as she is.

“What’d she say when you turned up?”

“She got mad and she said I couldn’t make this decision for her.  ‘Don’t take this away from me, Goku,’” he says, doing a dead-on impression of his mother. “‘Or I’ll never forgive you for the boys.’”

“Which means?”

Goten tries not to crane his neck in curiosity because it’ll give him away.  He feels his hands trembling and he stares at them, thinking of how they got here.  Him crouched in his uncle’s hallway listening to his father talk about why his mother left him.

“I thought she meant Goten.  Leaving him like that with the house and no explanation.  Thanks, by the way. For looking out for him.”

“I always do.  He’s my favorite nephew.” A pause. “Don’t tell Gohan.”

His father laughs and it doesn’t sound at all like it did normally.

“I don’t think he’d mind.” His father sighs again. “So I thought she meant me leaving him and, thinking about that guts me, y’know?  I dunno if we’ll ever get back to normal.”

There’s a pause as his uncle sips from something, maybe a coffee mug, and then he speaks.

“Hard to say, Kakarrot.  You fell far from that pedestal he had you on.”

Another sigh.  Goten feels his shoulders lock up.

“Right.  I know. I don’t even know where to begin.” He pauses again. “But, like I was sayin’, I thought she meant that but she said ‘boys’ and I thought back real far.  Back to when we were in college.”

“College?”

“Yeah.  Did y’know that Chi-Chi was one of three girls in her graduating class that went to college?  She was the princess of Fire Mountain, they called her. The wonder girl. She wows everyone and goes to college to get on the law program and what do I do?  I knock her up two years into it.”

“What does that have to do with now?”

“Raditz, you--I was the one who said she didn’t have to drop out.  I dropped out, I was so deadset on making sure she stayed in school and what if she didn’t want that?  What if she just wanted to stay home with her boy?”

Uncle Raditz snorts a laugh.

“Oh, please.  Don’t pull that.  Chi-Chi’s always been glad that you and Gohan got to spend that time together when he was a baby and that she was able to do her courses.  I know we don’t talk much but I’ve heard her say to mom that the happiest she was was when she was living in that semi with you and me and Lapis and little Gohan.  And, if she hadn’t met Goten yet, she would have been happy to go back to that time again.”

“Maybe…”

His father sounds despondent and not like himself, but who even is he anymore?  The man who used to give him horsey rides and who he looked up to? The guy who moped around the house for three weeks after his wife walked out?  The guy who took off and hid out living with his best friend? Goten closes his eyes and sighs. There’s some muttered goodbyes and brotherly hugs and then his father is gone and he’s avoided him once more.

“You can come out now, Tennie.”

He sheepishly moves from his hiding spot. “How long did you know I was there?”

“I saw you duck behind the wall.”

Goten stares at his father’s abandoned coffee cup on the table, still half-full.

“You’ll have to talk to him eventually.”

“I know.  But more eventually.”

Uncle Raditz nods and he looks like he’s going to say more when the door swings open.  At first Goten thinks it’s his father and he wants to duck and hide like a child, but it’s not.

“Babe?”

Uncle Lapis looks pissed as he walks into the kitchen, still in his park ranger uniform.

“They sent me home because I’m sick,” he grouses. “I’m not sick!”

It’s ruined by the fact that he’s speaking through a clogged nose and his eyes are rimmed with red.  Uncle Raditz places a hand against his head.

“You’re hot.”

“Thank you.  I try.”

“Ha ha.  Go lie down.”

He chooses to ignore him and asks, “Was that your brother I saw leaving?”

“Yes.  Now go lie down.”

“I’m not sick.  I will not lie down.”

Uncle Raditz sighs and picks him up, throwing him over his shoulder.

“Let’s get you some PJ’s and some cold medicine.”

Uncle Lapis puts up a token resistance, kicking his legs a little and screwing his face up in a way that is at odds with his usual demeanor and it reminds Goten of something.

“Uncle Lapis--did your sister ever mention my dad staying with her?”

He considers it and then says, “No.  I would have remembered if she did.”

Well, there’s that.  Uncle Raditz tromps upstairs, taking Uncle Lapis with him and Goten realizes that, with everything else, he forgot to ask him about a tux.

--

The rehearsal room is empty except for him.  Trunks stands at the barre, feeling warm and loose.  It’s quiet but, by now, he can play the music in his head as he begins to dance.  He’s barefoot and not doing the full choreography since he’d be a fool to do it without his shoes and his feet hurt from dancing all day, probably will hurt for the next week, but he doesn’t care.  The room isn’t full of talking and gossiping dancers, isn’t full of yelled commands and truncated music. It’s just him, moving on the floor, feeling the rhythm of his own body.

It was like this the first time he’d danced.  His mom had taken him to a production of Le Spectre de la rose and Trunks had been mystified.  The way the rose leaped and moved, it was like his eyes were opened for the first time.  He had danced all the way to the subway and even later when he was supposed to be practicing with his father at the gym, he couldn’t stop talking about it, jabbering little kid he was.  He wanted to move like that. He wanted to dance.

He still remembers a little of his boxing training and he bounces from foot to foot, fists loose in front of him.  He melts into another move, bending his body, leaping not as far as the Rose but enough that the sound of his feet hitting the floor resounds through the empty room.  He isn’t aware of someone else in the room until a hand touches his waist. Trunks jerks to the side, startled out of his reverie and a bit annoyed that someone not only interrupted him but also that they touched him.

The annoyance flares to anger when he sees that it’s Mira.

“What do you want?”

They aren’t in rehearsal and he isn’t his choreographer right now.  He’s the married man who lied to him and manipulated him into sleeping with him.

“It’s always amazing to watch you,” he says, his eyes roving over Trunks’s body still in his unitard and tights. “You make the dance at once erotic and elegant.  I don’t know how you do it.”

“Because I’m good,” he spits out.

Trunks turns away from him to his bag.  His moment is ruined. He pulls his sweats on over his tights and then grabs his boots and the socks stuffed in them.  Mira is watching him as he puts his coat on and is fussing with his gloves.

“The offer is still there,” Mira says. “If you want it.”

“A solo?” he asks.  He doesn’t look up as he digs through his bag to find his knit hat. “I told you--”

“Not that.”

Another touch, this time on the small of his back.  Trunks springs to his feet, resisting the juvenile urge to swing his bag into Mira’s stomach.

“Hell no,” he snaps. “Never again.”

“Trunks…”

“Why would I sleep with you again?” he demands. “You lied to me!”

Mira has the nerve to roll his eyes. “Oh, please.  I did nothing of the sort.”

“You told me you and your wife had ‘an arrangement.’” He makes sure his finger quotes are sharp and full of attitude. “You said it was an ‘open marriage.’  It wasn’t! You used me and lied to me and now you dangle solos in front of me if I fuck you again and I don’t care if I’m in the corps until I retire.  I will not do that to myself again.”

“Oh, don’t be dramatic.” Mira stares him down, taller than him and broader, probably stronger, too. “You can’t act high and mighty because we all know I’m not the first choreographer you fucked.  We all knew the man who had to leave because he slept with an apprentice. We all knew it was you. The fact that you keep doing this without even using it to your gain just makes you an idiot.”

He feels his temper bubble up, hot and sharp, and he wants to hit him.  He wants to scream.

“Mira!”

The voice that yells isn’t his.  He turns and there’s Towa, the owner of the company, standing in the doorway.  Towa, Mira’s wife. She’s heard everything. Trunks feels the blood drain from his face.  After all the work he’s put in, he’ll be out. He’ll lose it all.

“Towa, darling.”

She strides in the rehearsal room, all tulle and silk and leather at once, and Trunks feels the power coming from her.  She must have been a force onstage when she herself danced.

“Don’t ‘darling’ me.  I heard it all. I always suspected you were having an affair but that you’d take advantage of one of our dancers is another matter.”

Mira actually shrinks beneath her gaze. “Darling--”

“As I said, do not patronize me with nauseating pet names.”

Trunks feels frozen in place.  Is she mad at him? Should he leave before her ire turns on him?

“You,” she says, turning to him. “You may leave.  Your involvement is no longer of consequence.”

He decides to make himself scarce before she decides that she’s angry enough to banish him from the theatre altogether.  He leaves the theatre and all but dashes to the bus stop to wait. By the time his bus arrives, he’s already assumed he’s thrown out of the theatre and he has the entire ride, standing and not sitting, with his back and legs on fire, knowing she’ll toss him out.  Towa will look at him as nothing but her husband’s sidepiece, unworthy of anything given to him.

When he finally gets to his apartment, it’s a full blown panic attack.  Trunks can barely get his key in the lock, his hands shake so badly. He stares at his bed and falls on it, face-first.  He’ll be tossed from the theatre and rumors will circulate through the theatre district and he won’t make it anywhere. Even his nonna’s own reputation as a stage actress won’t save him.  He’ll have to retire early and not even be able to teach. Towa’s reach is terrifying. His muscles are screaming at him and the cold has sealed the sweat and smell on him but he doesn’t move.  Trunks curls up on his bed, staring at where the comforter is bunched up.

He watches his apartment darken and grow colder.  His phone vibrates with messages either from his mother or Goten.  Goten. Oh, God. He’ll probably cock that up, too. He took him confessing about Mira in stride but what about before?  Mira was right. He had screwed a choreographer before, when he was only sixteen and full of himself. He’s a joke.

Some time later, in the darkness of his apartment, Trunks feels a hand stroke his hair and he thinks he’s imagining it until he remembers that, in his mental fugue, he didn’t bolt the door.  He jerks up from bed, frightened.

“Baby, it’s okay.”

His mother’s voice feels like honey on his ears.  And then the uneasiness sets in.

“Mom?  How’d you get here?”

“That ‘find your phone’ app.  You weren’t answering any messages and we were worried.  So...you live here?”

“It looks better in the light.”

“Does it?”

“Not really.”

He hangs his head, ashamed.  Ashamed of himself, his situation, his apartment.  He feels bottomed out and miserable, the good feelings he’d been coasting on since he and Goten got together fading fast.

“You didn’t lock your door.”

“I do normally,” he tells her. “Bad day.”

Without warning, his mother pulls him to her chest and strokes his hair once more.

“Baby…”

“Mom, I’m twenty-five.”

“I don’t care.”

It’s no use arguing with her so he allows it.

“Trunks,” she says after a moment, “you should come home for the holidays.  I know you have performances and then a week off...spend it at home. Not here.”

“Mom--”

“I know you want your independence but when I was driving here, I was so worried for you...my parents were so new age and hands off with me that they never were really concerned when I went off on my own and lived in a crappy apartment, but I’m not like them.”

And here, at this low, sitting in the dark icebox that is his apartment, Trunks can see her point.

“For the holidays,” he allows. “But I need this.  I need my own space.”

“I understand.  Now let’s pack you up and if you want to tell me about your bad day on the drive home, you can.”

She smiles at him in the dark and Trunks feels warm for the first time since he stopped dancing.

--

It’s the first holiday, really, since it all happened.  Last year, everything was fresh and awful and he had only just moved into the attic and kept himself busy with work.  But Launch has allowed her entire staff Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off at both of her restaurant locations so he’s free.  Tonight, Christmas Eve, he’s going to Trunks’s house and tomorrow...Trunks is coming to his grandparents’ place.

“Are you sure you don’t have to go see your family tomorrow?” he asks again.

“I told you, we do things on Christmas Eve here.”

“What about your mom’s family?”

“They live out of state and, anyway, they don’t celebrate Christmas so it’s fine.”

It’s fine...it isn’t.

Everyone occupying one space, ignoring everything between them.  Goten can hardly wait. But he can feel things changing with them and maybe it’s time.  Maybe?

“When is your next performance?” he asks instead.

“We have the week off--well, usually.  It might be more.” Trunks gives a sly smile. “We have to find a new choreographer.”

He’d told him everything about Mira and the fallout and his place in the company secure.  He’s glad for him, more glad that Mira can’t perv on him anymore, either. It isn’t a jealousy thing, but that he knows how uncomfortable it made Trunks.

“Sorry in advance about my family,” he says with a laugh. “They can be a bit much.”

“It’s fine,” he says diplomatically, hoping Trunks saves that goodwill for his own splintered family.

The house is narrow and two stories, painted blue on top with grayish bricks making up much of the first story.  It isn’t too different from Uncle Raditz’s place, which makes sense since it’s only a neighborhood over. They walk through the low, chain-link fence that closes in around the snow-covered yard and crunch over ice and slush up the walk to the front door.

“You’re staying here, right?” he asks.

“For the holidays,” he sharply corrects.

Right.  Goten watches him slide his key into the lock and everything around the house and makes him wish Trunks would stay longer.  No chilled apartment, no sirens, no long bus ride to see him. It’s warm, too, and smells like simmering sauce and garlic. The foyer is tiny and immediately melts into a hallway that goes into what he presumes is the kitchen.  A living room, packed with people, is directly to his left.

“Aah!   Mi tesoro!”

A slight woman comes running around the side of the plaid couch to wrap her arms around Trunks.  She pulls away for a moment and then flicks her gaze to Goten. He doesn’t remember her from the shows and she’s a fair bit older so he figure she must be his grandmother.

“Is this the boyfriend?” she asks. “He’s handsome.”

A tall man with a graying goatee comes up and puts both hands on her shoulders.

“Argulia, were the theatrics necessary?”

“They’re always necessary.”

Trunks cringes a bit.  The man pulls her away long enough for the two of them to put their coats in the closet and then Trunks leads him into the living room.  He sweeps his hand across it and begins introductions.

“Okay, so there’s my mom, my dad, my sister, Bra, my Uncle Tarble, Nonno, Nonna, and Grunkle Nappa.  Everyone, this is my boyfriend, Goten.”

There’s a flurry of conversation as he’s bounced from person to person and, before he knows what’s happening, he’s sitting on a loveseat in the same plaid as the couch, holding a hard piece of salami with a chunk of sharp provolone cheese sandwiched between Trunks’s father and the man he said was his great-uncle.

“You’ve got a good build for boxing,” Nappa says. “What do you do?”

“I’m, uh, a sous chef at Duality downtown.”

That makes Trunks’s mom’s eyes light up.

“Ooh, I’ve heard of that.  I wanted to go for our anniversary but someone said it was too expensive.”

“It is,” Trunks’s dad says gruffly. “I’m not paying through the nose to eat tiny fucking portions.”

She huffs and pouts, but Goten can tell it’s not serious.  There’s a good banter here, a lot of talking and raised voices, but it seems to just be the way things are.  No one is angry. Trunks’s sister is complaining about two girls who are vying to kick her and another girl out as the heads of the social justice committee at school.

“Nonno says to approach it like union negotiations but Trixie and Ginger don’t want to hear it,” she says grumpily.

She makes him think of Pan with how passionate she is and it makes him feel bad for how he’s been neglecting his niece in the wake of it all.

“I think you shouldn’t be letting girls with names like Trixie and Ginger sabotage you like this,” Trunks says.  He looks beautiful in a soft, gray sweater, holding a glass of wine. “Our family’s pride will never recover.”

She sticks her tongue out at him.  Everything is so natural that Goten feels at ease.  It’s like how his family used to be and part of his chest aches but he pushes it back because he doesn’t want to bog himself or anyone else down.

“You look familiar,” Trunks’s dad says.

He thinks back to what Uncle Raditz said about Trunks looking like someone he used to know.  Was he talking about Trunks’s dad? He can definitely see the resemblance between them. Other than the color of their hair and eyes, Trunks and his dad look very similar.  And Trunks said his dad was a boxer, right? And one of the shady things Uncle Raditz had said he done was run an illegal boxing betting ring.

“I do?” he asks.

He thinks he shouldn’t bring it up.  Maybe it isn’t a good memory. But he’s still staring at him with the same intensity Trunks does when he wants something and it’s bizarre to see that facial expression on someone else.  He wants to slide out from his spot but he’s pinned.

“Raditz Son,” he says finally. “That’s who you remind me of.  You know him?”

“He’s my uncle,” he replies.

“Uncle?  Oh, then you’re his annoying younger brother’s kid, then?”

He isn’t sure what to say to that.  The world is suffocatingly small that even Trunks’s dad knows his father, but.  Is he surprised? Everyone knows his dad. He can’t go to the corner store without someone asking after him.  It’s let up now that he’s back and the neighborhood can rejoice again at the reappearance of Kakarrot Goku Son.

“I am.”

“You look like him.”

“Can’t help that.”

To his surprise, Trunks’s dad gives a bit of a laugh.  He thinks he’s okay for now in his books and he’s glad.  Trunks, as much as he talks about his independence, is clearly close with his family.  He’s happy to be here.

Trunks’s grandfather (nonno?) sticks his head out of the doorway to the kitchen and his eyes find him.  That same intensity. Geez. How does his mom handle it?

“You’re a chef, you said?” he asks.

Goten nods.

“Get in here.  We need help.”

He wriggles out from his spot and walks towards the kitchen.

“If you put him to work, you have to pay him!” Trunks calls. “He’s a professional.”

“It’s fine,” he assures him, but Trunks winks and his heart melts a little.

Goten walks into the kitchen.

“Hey,” Tarble says to him. “I have to check on the eel, so can you stir this?”

He takes the wooden spoon from him and then asks, “Eel?”

“Festa dei sette pesci,” Tarble says.

Goten’s heard of it before and nods.  He can smell different seafood under the different bubbling sauces and spices filling the kitchen.

“Everything smells good,” he says.

“It better,” Trunks’s grandfather says. “Or Nappa will take cooking duties from me next year.”

After he aids in the kitchen, Goten helps Bra and Trunks set the table and pour more wine and he feels like he fits in.  This doesn’t feel like his first Christmas Eve with Trunks’s family and he isn’t sure if it’s because of the familiarity of how his family was or simply because he wants to fit in.  He wants to be here.

“Did you make baccala?” Trunks’s grandmother asks.

“Of course, ma,” Tarble says.

There’s so many different types of seafood on the table and pasta it sits warmly in his stomach as he eats.

“Pass me some cod balls,” Trunks says and then in a lower voice he whispers, “if you know what I mean.”

Goten elbows him. “I don’t want to.”

Later, they open presents, and he’s surprised when Trunks’s mom puts a wrapped package on his lap.  He had gotten Trunks a pair of new leg warmers a few days ago and Trunks had given him a novelty apron that he said he should wear when he cooks naked, but there was no discussion of gifts being exchanged here.

“I heard you were coming and everyone loves unwrapping presents,” she says with a smile.

Goten can barely get the thanks out.  He digs his fingers into the wrapping paper and tears it away to reveal a sweater in a deep purple color.

“I wasn’t sure what you’d like but nearly everyone looks good in eggplant,” she says.

Goten holds it up. “Oh, wow, thanks.”

“I didn’t make it,” she says. “I’m not that good.  But I hope you like it.”

“I love it.  Thank you.”

He thinks about the sweater later when he and Trunks are crammed in his childhood bed, unable to even touch each other if they wanted to.  Trunks’s sister is on the other wall and she keeps smacking it every now and then and yelling, “No funny business!”

“My family is a lot,” he says.

“It’s okay, I liked it.  I liked them.”

Even in the dark, he can see the look that Trunks fixes him with.

“You already got into my pants, you don’t have to try and sugar me up.”

He gives a soft laugh and kisses him.  Trunks wraps his arms around him as best as he can and pulls hims close.

“I’m ready to meet your family tomorrow.”

“That makes one of us.”

He kisses him again, this time more gently.  He hasn’t told Trunks anything, but maybe he’s figuring it out.  God, he isn’t looking forward to tomorrow.

--

Trunks can tell that Goten is hesitating outside of his grandparents’ house.  He hasn’t told him but there’s something going on. He alludes to things being bad and barely talks about his family.  Trunks can put it together, but he hasn’t asked. And yet they’re still here. He fiddles with the ends of his scarf and turns to look at him.

“You sure this is okay?”

Goten lets out a laugh, his breath visibly puffing out in front of him.

“I’m not, actually.  But let’s go in anyway.”

Trunks reaches out and takes his hand.  He can feel the warmth of Goten’s palm even through two layers of wool gloves and it makes him smile.  So many things about him make him smile and he wonders if it’ll always be like that. Already it feels like they’ve been together for longer than nearly two months.

He feels bad not having brought anything, not even a bottle of wine, but Goten assured him that it was okay.  Even so, he feels empty-handed walking up to the door. He waits for Goten to use a key but he instead knocks.

“I lost it,” he admits.

That’s probably some kind of weighted statement but the nuances of it are lost on Trunks and instead they stand in the cold, waiting for someone to open the door.  Finally, someone comes and stares at them both through the storm door. It’s an older woman wearing a pair of leggings and an oversized sweater and he thinks she might be Goten’s mom.  She opens the storm door, the metal bottom of it scraping on the cement of the stoop and throws her arms out.

“Goten!”

“Hey, grandma.”

Grandma?  She steps aside to let them in and takes both of their coats before tossing them on the back of the couch.

“Gee, we could have done that.”

She grins and Trunks still can’t believe that she’s his grandmother.  The living room is arguably more crowded than his own and he isn’t sure who to introduce himself to first.  Goten seems to sense this, though, as he takes it upon himself.

“Okay, so that’s my Nana Gine, that’s Papa Bardock--you already know my uncles, although I don’t think you met my cousin, Bardy, right?  Um, that’s my brother, Gohan, and my sister-in-law, Videl. My niece, Pan, my nephew, Puck, and.” Goten’s voice dies in his throat as he gestures to one man leaning against the fireplace mantel.  It comes back as he manages, “That’s my dad.”

The man in question looks so much like Goten to the point that it’s actually frightening.  Come to think of it, his grandfather does, too. They look like one person at different points in their life and it’s kind of wigging him out.  But that can’t be why Goten hesitated.

“This is my boyfriend, Trunks.”

Sapphire turns and gives a smug look to Pan.

“I told you he was too cute for Goten.”

“Is he?” Pan asks, sounding clueless and bewildered.

“I’m five!” Puck exclaims.

He feels a bit overwhelmed with so many people talking at once.  Goten’s dad eases up off of the mantel and walks towards them. When he reaches them, he’s smiling but also not looking at Goten.

“Hi,” he says and holds his hand out. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Goten looks at him curiously and Trunks can feel the awkward tension in the air.  Trunks takes his hand and the greeting seems warm and genuine. So whatever is going on with his father probably doesn’t have to do with Goten’s sexuality.

The awkwardness continues as if everyone is putting on a show.  It’s not for him, though, at least he doesn’t think so. It seems like they’re putting on a show for themselves.  He sits near Goten’s uncles because at least their interactions with each other are genuine. But not too close because the one who looks like he was a model or something is very clearly getting over being sick.

“So, uh, what grade are you in?” he asks Pan.

She eyes him for a moment before answering.

“Sixth.”

“Oh, so’s my sister.”

“I’m co-head of the social justice committee,” she says proudly, “but these two girls are trying to take me and the other co-head down.”

That sounds familiar.

“Trixie and Ginger?”

“Yes!  They only wanna be on the committee ‘cause they want the elective credit and they think it’ll be easy to kick us out, but they don’t actually care about oppression and injustice.” Pan shakes her head and then looks suspicious again. “How do you know that?”

“My sister is the other co-head.”

That seems to win her over fully because Pan gets up from her mom’s side to plop next to him.

“You’re Bra’s brother?” Her eyes are lit up. “She’s so cool!”

This conversation seems to cut a bit of the tension, but it’s clearly still lingering.  It’s between Goten and his brother and Goten and his father and both of them and their father and it feels very strange that no one’s talking about it.  There’s a reprieve when Goten goes into the kitchen to help Gine cook, but everything has an awkward undercurrent and he can’t quite puzzle it out. A knock comes at the door.

“I’ll get it.”

Raditz gets up and walks to the door.  When he opens it, Trunks sees him falter.

“Oh.”

A weighted pause and he wonders what new realm of awkwardness is about to walk into the house.

“Come on in then.”

He holds the storm door open and a short woman with dark hair walks in, holding a wool coat around herself with one hand and a tote bag in the other.  Everyone’s face changes upon seeing her and Trunks wonders who she is. Goten’s dad looks the most startled.

“Chi-Chi?”

Trunks feels like he was dropped into a soap opera after not following the plot for months and he realizes, sitting there, just how little Goten’s told him about his family.  Goten walks out of the kitchen at what his father says. Stares at the woman. She holds up the bag.

“Hi.  I brought some food.”

Goten keeps staring and then says, in a small voice, “Mom?”

--

What’s the deal about sharks?  If they stop moving, they die? That’s how Goten’s felt since his mom’s unceremonious return home on Christmas.  It hasn’t changed much except she’s staying at Gohan’s house rather than with his grandpa on Fire Mountain. He wonders how much of a squeeze it is now because last time, Pan was a baby and Puck wasn’t even born.  His father is still at his grandparents’ house and Goten has been working nonstop to stay out of it all. He knows it’s immature, has known it for some time, but he has to put it off. He doesn’t know how to emotionally process it and now it’s festered for a year and is even worse.

At least it’s having a positive effect on his job.  His back hurts and his feet are in agony but the head chef has commended him on his effort.  Launch herself came by the restaurant and complimented his plating skills. There’s rumors of her opening a third restaurant downtown and he kind of wants to help her open it.  It’ll be a definite boost and, anyway, concentrating on his career is easier than examining whatever is happening with his family.

Goten pulls on his parka and gloves as he steps into the chilly January air.  No sooner is he on the sidewalk does someone leap out at him.

“Trunks, why?”

His boyfriend looks giddy, eyes bright and shining, hair mussed up under his knit cap, which is askew as if he ran here.

“I texted you,” he says, shouldering his bulging messenger bag.

“Did you?”

He fishes his phone out of the pocket of his chef pants and turns the sound back on.  Sure enough, there’s two texts from Trunks, a few hours apart.

(Trunks): i have good news!!!!!!!

(Trunks): i’m gonna pounce on you when you’re out of work

“What’s your good news?” Goten slips the phone back in his pocket.

His grin broadens somehow and he reaches out to take both of his hands.  He can feel how cold they are through his gloves and he brings them to his lips to breathe some warmth into them.  Trunks’s bright, wide grin softens slightly as the gesture.

“I’m dancing the part of Prince Désiré in The Sleeping Beauty,” he says.

“A big role?”

“Very big.”

Goten embraces him, pulls hims close.  Still holding onto one another, they begin the walk to the bus stop.  Trunks’s messenger bag is banging against Goten’s hip, but he doesn’t mind.

“You’re going to be incredible,” he says.

“And it’s real.  Mira was fired and the new choreographer said it was ‘a crime’ that I was in the corps this whole time.”

“Fired?”

“And maybe divorced.  That remains to be seen, but.” Trunks is smiling, so bright and beautiful, that Goten feels his infectious joy.

The bus rumbles to the station and they pile on, falling into a pair of empty seats.  The bus driver eyes them weirdly as if wondering if they’re drunk (or, at least, that’s what Goten chooses to believe) but doesn’t say anything.

“Are you still at your parents’ house?” he asks.

Trunks pulls a face and nods. “Yeah.  I guess being able to sleep in a bit more before rehearsal is nice, but I miss having my own space.  I miss us having privacy.”

“Are you going back?”

“My lease is up in February and I don’t know.  I thought I would...”

“Maybe we could--” Goten cuts himself off. “Not like that.  I mean, roommates. Like my cousin could come. Bardock? He’s twenty.”

It’s a poor save but it is far too soon to entertain moving in together.  Trunks nods.

“Right.  Something to think about.  Nice to not have to be silent in the attic.”

“Or listen to Bra blaring Ariana Grande songs when she thinks we’re fooling around.”

Trunks laughs and rests his head on his shoulder.  Goten holds him close. He likes the idea of him being closer, not worrying about him in his apartment.  And he likes his family, loud though they are.

At his stop, they get off and head quietly into the house.  Trunks knows his way through the dark now, holding onto his hand as they go towards the kitchen.  The light is still on, which he figures means that Uncle Raditz is raiding it for something to eat.  If he were to guess, he’s probably eating the vegan key lime tart Goten brought Uncle Lapis from work the other day and he wonders if he can somehow use this to get something out of him.

He walks into the kitchen, ready to catch him in the act, but it’s not his uncle.  Instead, his father is sitting at the kitchen table.

“Dad?”

“Hey, Goten.”

They meet eyes for a moment and Goten doesn’t know what to say.  His father must not either because he turns to Trunks.

“Hey, it’s good to see you again.”

Trunks smile. “You too, Mr. Son.”

“I heard you’re a ballet dancer, like, professionally.  Is that true?”

Heard it from who?  Not Goten. Trunks nods.

“Yeah.  I actually just got cast as the Prince in The Sleeping Beauty.  There’s a couple princes, but I’m the one who’d probably, uh, be compared to Prince Phillip?”

“Oh, wow!  That’s incredible!” his dad exclaims. “My--uh, Chi-Chi, she loves the ballet.”

Trunks is beaming at the praise. “I can’t guarantee friends and family tickets since I’m sure my whole family is going to want to see me dance a solo part but I an see if I can get to some to a performance.”

“That’d be incredible.”

Goten feels sour watching his father work his magic on his boyfriend because that’s how he is.  He’s magnetic and bright and makes everyone like him.

“Trunks, can you wait for me upstairs?” he asks, maybe speaking a bit too abruptly.

A look flashes on his face that’s almost annoyance but then he nods and heads upstairs.  Goten stares at his father, alone with him for the first time since he saw him on his grandmother’s stoop.

“Goten…”

“What?” he asks sharply. “What is it?”

His father looks pained and he feels it all build up inside him.  Boil over.

“You left me!” he shouts. “Mom left and I stayed and helped you for three weeks and then you left.  You didn’t care.  You didn’t tell me where you went.  Or anyone, but you left me.  And my mom was gone and you were gone and I had to take care of the house stuff until Gohan stepped in.  I had to deal with being in that place, that empty awful place by myself until Uncle Raditz offered me the attic.  And you left! And you went on a bender! And you forgot me.  Because of course you did!  You forgot the one you left.”

He thinks he might start crying and the back of his eyes feel hot, his throat tastes metallic.

“You heard that?”

“I live here,” he says because it’s easier than saying he was eavesdropping.

His dad looks at him for a moment and then says, “I’m so sorry.”

It isn’t what Goten expected and he isn’t sure what to say.

“What?”

“I’m sorry I left you.  I’m sorry I fell apart. I let you down.  I’m sorry. Leaving was selfish. That’s why your mom--it’s.  I’m sorry.”

And then his father is hugging him and Goten doesn’t know what to do except hug back.  His father releases him and lets out a watery laugh.

“This isn’t...it doesn’t erase the last year,” he says. “That’s.  Going to take a while.”

“I know.”

Does he?  Maybe. Goten gives him a nod and thinks that’s the end of the conversation.  In any event, he needs to leave.

“It’s a start,” he allows, and his father smiles a bit.

Goten walks towards the stairs and then pauses.

“And, with mom, don’t worry.  The thing that’s most infuriating about you, dad, is that it’s impossible to stay mad at you.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

A broken, jagged laugh passes between them.

“Good night.”

“Good night, Tennie.”

It’s the first time he’s heard his nickname from his father in a while and it makes him feel...some kind of way.  Goten turns and walks upstairs. He figures that his dad knows how to let himself out. When he reaches the top of the steps, he sees his uncle leaning in the doorway of his bedroom.

“Did I wake you up?”

He shakes his head. “No.  I was awake. Although, y’know, for being a nimble ballet dancer, Trunks really tromps up the stairs like a clydesdale.”

He laughs, this time for real.

“You heard that downstairs.”

“Yep.”

“Were you going to go down there and eat the tart before you heard us?”

“You can’t prove that I was.”

They laugh again and Goten thinks about his father, about the last year and how, through it all, how much his uncle was there for him.

“I don’t think I ever really thanked you,” he says. “For letting me live here.  For...everything.”

Uncle Raditz shrugs but then pulls him into his second hug in the past few minutes.  This time, it isn’t awkward, and Goten hugs him back.

“Okay, go to your boy,” he says, releasing him.

“You, too.” He nods back to the bedroom.

Goten goes up the lowered ladder and pulls up the hatch behind him.  Trunks is in pajamas, under the covers and he wants nothing more to join him.  He peels off his parka and his work clothes and pulls on his own pajamas. Crawls in with him.  Trunks holds him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. Maybe, as it begins to heal, he can tell him more about everything that happened with his family.

Goten presses his face into his neck, thinking about seeing him onstage soon in a starring role.  Thinking about seeing him in that grocery story. Back to Trunks onstage, leaping and moving gracefully as if he’s made of silk, of water.

Maybe they’ll think of moving in down the line, but not now.  Now they’ll still steal and borrow alone time. He’s glad Trunks is closer, glad he’s being recognized without Mira looming over him.  He’s even a bit glad his dad is back, his mom, too. Maybe things can get back on track. His career, his relationships, it’s looking bright.  Goten smiles a bit and nuzzles into Trunks’s neck, peppering it with kisses. He thinks he’s falling for him, wants him in his life.

“You all good?”

“I think so.” He snuggles against him. “Better now.”

Trunks laughs, the sound vibrating against his cheek, and Goten can’t help but feel more than a little bit hopeful.